125584
THE DEWEY SCHOOL
JOHN DEWEY, ABOUT 1890
The Dewey School
THE LABORATORY SCHOOL OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
1896-1903
By KATHERINE CAMP MAYHEW
and ANNA CAMP EDWARDS
* Introduction by JOHN DEWEY
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY
IN CORPORATE!*
NEW YORK LONDON
1936, BY
COMPANY, INC.
rights reserved,. "This book,^ or parts must not be reproduced in any permission of the publishers.
PRINTED INT XHE XTNIXED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
The increasing number of progressive schools throughout the world shows the wide and fast growing interest on the part of parents and educators in an educational experience for their children which they do not find in schools of the more tradi- tional types. This interest renders an account of an early organ- ized experiment in progressive education suitable and timely.
This school was a cooperative venture of parents, teachers, and educators, and was carried on at the University of Chicago during the years from 1896 to 1903. Under the direction of John Dewey, then head of the University's unified departments of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy, the undertaking grew out of a genuine desire to work out with children an edu- cational experience more creative than that provided by even the best of the current systems.
The school was a laboratory for the departments of Psychol- ogy and Pedagogy where Mr. Dewey's educational theories and their sociological implications were worked out in accord with the then new psychological principles and in association with colleagues and students, the teachers in the school, and the par- ents of the children. It was never a "practice" school.
The book has been called The Dewey School not because Mr. Dewey as its head ever exercised any of the dominance too often evident in a "One man's school." Rather was the title chosen out of gratitude to the great person who made the school possible by his objective and impersonal attitude of faith in the growing ability of every individual, whether child or teacher. Mr. Dewey was never dominating. His respect for the opinions of even the youngest and least experienced of his staff bore fruit in the creative character of the work done. Only a person who has worked in such an atmosphere can understand what inspiration to creative work such freedom gives. After all, teaching is a creative social art. Mr. Dewey's philosophy
vi PREFACE
expressed through his personality stimulated others and re- leased their powers so that all who understood his point of view worked freely and cooperatively under his guidance.
The subtitle of the book, The Laboratory School of the Uni- versity of Chicago, indicates its relation to the University, al- ways a source of direct and indirect help and backing. Without this direction from experts, the teachers, functioning creatively in their daily experience, would have traveled many more blind alleys than they did. Had this experiment been allowed to come to fruition, it would have presented the first example of a unified enterprise in education at all age levels.
The slowly evolving curriculum of the Dewey School in both subject-matter and method was the result of the combined ex- perimental efforts of trained specialists. These chapters should reveal that it was scientifically developed. Great emphasis was given to the use of directed experimental method in all areas of study. The main hypothesis was that life itself, especially those occupations and associations which serve man's chief needs, should furnish the ground experience for the education of children. The classrooms in this laboratory school were the proving grounds where teachers—specialists in their subjects- would discover, by trying, the particular experiences that would enrich the child's present life, making it a growing process and an ever more real and satisfactory preparation for the future. The hypothesis was that freedom to express in action is a necessary condition of growth, but that guidance of such expression is an equally necessary condition, especially of childhood's freedom. Learning, a main issue to the teacher, was seen as a side issue to the child, a by-product of his activity. The test of learning was the increasing ability of the child to meet new situations through habits of considered action which were even more social in character. It was found that satisfaction and emotional stability accompany such growth. The develop- ment of the curriculum was in relation to the immediate in- terests of growing children and thereby revealed the chief in- terests of the different psychological levels of this span in their life development. A type of education in which there is steady maintenance of cooperative processes and constant use of the
PREFACE vii
scientific principle of objective testing of ideas through action and evaluating the results of such action for future planning, has significant implications for the world ferment of the day.
The authors were both teachers in the school. Katherine Camp Mayhew, as vice-principal, was in charge of the develop- ing curriculum; she was also head of the science department. Anna Camp Edwards was a teacher of history in the early ex- perimental period and later as a special tutor followed through the work of all other departments at older age levels, an expe- rience which has aided her in interpreting the value of Mr. Dewey's philosophy of education in the present crisis.
The scope of this study was decided upon and its plan worked out by the authors in close consultation with Mr. Dewey, who has guided the entire development of the book. Throughout these consultations Mrs. Edwards acted as secretary and cus- todian of the records from which the selections used were made. In order that the manuscript should have literary unity, it be- came apparent that the composition and writing must be done by one of the authors. Mrs. Edwards has served in this capacity for all the chapters except the seventeenth. She is responsible for the amalgamation and editing of all the records and con- tributions from the various accredited sources. Mrs. Mayhew taught science and mathematics in the school for seven years. This and her wide later experience are the backgrounds of the seventeenth chapter and for her many invaluable contributions to all the other chapters of the book, especially her account of how the school developed the approach to history as the story of man's progress through invention, exploration, and dis- covery.
The original manuscript of this book was too large for pub- lication. All the chapters were reduced in size, and two chapters omitted from the body of the book. These two chapters, how- ever, have been included in the form of an appendix. The first, The Evolution of Mr. Dewey's Principles of Education, was written by Mrs. Anna Camp Edwards; the second, The Theory of the Chicago Experiment, by Mr. Dewey himself.
From 1896 to 1899 extensive accounts of the experimental school were published in the University Record. During 1900
viii PREFACE
the reports of the school appeared in a series of nine mono- graphs entitled the Elementary School Record. These were later bound in one volume which soon was out of print. The records of 1901 and 1902 consisted of typed reports and summaries care- fully collected and edited by Laura L. Runyon. These were never printed. The sources upon which the writers have drawn include the publications and documents mentioned above, the current and later writings of Mr. and Mrs. Dewey, and those of alumni and friends of the school. The school was deeply in- debted to Mrs. Alice C. Dewey for her exceptional insight in solving many of its problems. She also collected and preserved a large part of the source materials. Mrs. Dewey's death in 1927 made impossible her plan to write the history of the school in collaboration with Mrs. Mayhew. Following her death, the authors undertook the work at Mr. Dewey's request and grate- fully acknowledge their debt to Mrs. Dewey.
In the following pages much material has been taken from hitherto unpublished accounts of the school. The writers have also used extracts from published articles by the following: Georgia F. Bacon, Althea Harmer Bardeen, Lillian Cushman Brown, Hattie Hover Harding, Charles F. Harding, Katherine Andrews Healy, Nellie Johnson O'Conner, May Root Kern, Laura L. Runyon, and Katherine C. Mayhew. Special mention should be made of the never failing support of Mr. and Mrs. George H. Mead and their constant faith in the educational worth of the school. The first account of the undertaking, The School and Society, a series of three lectures on the school by Mr. Dewey, was edited by Mr. and Mrs. Mead, assisted by Katherine Camp Mayhew and Althea Harmer Bardeen.
Appreciation is expressed to Miss Bacon, Mrs. Brown, Miss Runyon, Sara French Miller, D. P. MacMillan, and Mary Tough for counsel in the early planning of the manuscript; to Elsie Clapp for her suggestions in relation to the needs of teachers; to Harry O. Gillette for access to letters and information col- lected by a graduate student for an unfinished thesis and to the few records of the last year of the school, preserved in the pres- ent School of Education of the University of Chicago; to George W. Locke, Anna Bryan, Grace Fulmer, E. C. Moore, Frank H.
PREFACE ix
Manny, W. A. Baldwin, and Helen Thompson Wooley; also to many pupils of the school, parents, former teachers, graduate students, and visitors at the school for their loyal support. Ap- preciation is also expressed to Marion Le Brun Pigman for her aid in the first revisions of the manuscript; to Elizabeth F. Camp, John L. Childs, Richard H. Edwards, Galen M. Fisher, Price H. Gwynn, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. Hanna, Mrs. Harriet Hover Harding, Mrs. Katherine Andrews Healy, and Mrs. William Kent for valuable suggestions on the manuscript. The authors are indebted to several friends and alumni of the school for making it possible to include a number of the illustrations, thus giving much added interest and value to the story of the experiment.
Gratitude is due above all to Mr. Dewey for his written con- tributions, his permission to quote his writings freely, and for the generous donation of his time and thought, and to Evelyn Dewey (Mrs. Granville Smith, Jr.) for the final editing of the manuscript.
CONTENTS
PAGE PREFACE V
INTRODUCTION XV
PART I
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER
I. GENERAL HISTORY $
II. EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM . 2O
PART II
THE CURRICULUM-SOCIAL OCCUPATIONS
III. EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICES DEVELOPING THE CURRICU-
LUM 39
IV. HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 56
V. SOCIAL OCCUPATIONS SERVING THE HOUSEHOLD . . 74
VI. PROGRESS THROUGH INVENTION AND DISCOVERY . . 95
VII. PROGRESS THROUGH EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY . 117
VIII. LOCAL HISTORY 141
IX. COLONIAL HISTORY AND THE REVOLUTION . . . . l66
X. EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF THE COLONISTS . . .185
XI. EXPERIMENTS IN SPECIALIZED ACTIVITIES . . . . 2OO
XII. EXPERIMENTS IN SPECIALIZED ACTIVITIES . . . . 22O
XIII. EXPERIMENTS IN SPECIALIZED ACTIVITIES . . . . 257
XIV. PRINCIPLES OF GROWTH GUIDING SELECTION OF ACTIV-
ITIES 25O
xii CONTENTS
PART III EDUCATIONAL USE OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD
CHAPTER PAGE
XV. EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITIES DEVELOPING SCIENTIFIC
METHOD AND CONCEPTS ........ 271
XVI. EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITIES DEVELOPING ORIGINS AND BACKGROUNDS OF SOCIAL LIFE
XVII. EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITIES DEVELOPING SKILLS IN
COMMUNICATION AND EXPRESSION ..... 336
PART IV
PERSONNEL-ORGANIZATION-EVALUATION
XVIII. TEACHERS AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION . . . .365
XIX. PARENTS AND CHILDREN ........ 397
XX. EVALUATION OF PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES . . .413
APPENDICES
I. THE EVOLUTION OF MR. DEWEY'S PRINCIPLES OF EDU-
CATION ............ 445
II. THE THEORY OF THE CHICAGO EXPERIMENT . . . 463 III. A LIST OF TEACHERS AND ASSISTANTS IN THE LABORA-
TORY SCHOOL .......... 479
INDEX ............... 481
ILLUSTRATIONS
John Dewey, about 1890 frontispiece
FACING PAGE
The last home of the Dewey School, 5412 Ellis Avenue, Chicago . 8
Gardening for the younger groups 96
Drawing working plans for farm utensils 96
Pooling their experience and labor to construct a larger smelter . 113
Weaving in the textile studio 113
A busy morning in the textile studio 160
Girls of Group X working on the club-house 232
The finished club-house in use (1903) 232
Biology from an evolutionary point of view 297
A class in cooking (Group VI, age 9 years, 1900) 305
Finishing the heddle 320
Painting scenery for the Columbus play 400
John Dewey, 1935 417
xiii
INTRODUCTION
The account of the Laboratory School contained in the pages that follow is so adequate as to render it unnecessary for me to add anything to what is said about its origin, aims, and methods. It is, however, a grateful task to express my apprecia- tion of the intelligent care with which the theory and practice of the school have been reported. Because of their long connec- tion with the school, the authors have a first-hand knowledge, while their responsible share in the work of the school has en- abled them to make an authoritative statement of its underly- ing ideas, its development, and the details of its operation. The entire history of the school was marked by an unusual degree of cooperation among parents, teachers, and pupils. It is par- ticularly gratifying to have this living evidence that the coop- erative spirit still continues.
My gratification is far from being merely personal. The vol- ume has historic interest and value, since it is a record of one of the earlier efforts in this country in the direction of experi- mental and progressive schools. But this historic interest is not all. This educational movement is still going on and is far from having reached its goal; its unsolved problems are still many. The book has, I think, a good deal to contribute now and here. It is timely as well as historical in interest. There is one point in particular which may be singled out for its present bearing. The problem of the relation between individual freedom and collective well-being is today urgent and acute, perhaps more so than at any time in the past. The problem of achieving both of these values without the sacrifice of either one is likely to be the dominant problem of civilization for many years to come. The schools have their part to play in working out the solution, and their own chief task is to create a form of community life and organization in which both of these values are conserved. The school whose work is reported in this volume was animated
xvi INTRODUCTION
by a desire to discover in administration, selection of subject- matter, methods o£ learning, teaching, and discipline, how a school could become a cooperative community while develop- ing in individuals their own capacities and satisfying their own needs. I am sure the present value of the volume is not ex- hausted in its account of this phase of the school's life. But the present importance of the issue emboldens me to believe that it is especially timely at the present juncture.
JOHN DEWEY
PARTI
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER I
GENERAL HISTORY
following pages tell the story of one of the earliest ex- periments in what later came to be known as progressive educo^ tion. This experiment was an integral part of the University of Chicago during the years 1896 to 1904, and was an undertaking which aimed to work put, through the University, a school system which should be an organic whole from the kindergarten to the university. Conducted under the management and super- vision of the University's Department of Philosophy, Psychol- ogy, and Education, it bore the same relation to the work of that department that a laboratory bears to biology, physics, or chem- istry. Like any such laboratory it had two main purposes: (i) to exhibit, test, verify, and criticize theoretical statements and principles; and (2) to add to the sum of facts and principles in its special line. In consequence, it was often called the Laboratory School. The name is significant. John Dewey, when called to be the head of the department in 1894, had arrived at certain philosophical and psychological ideas which he de- sired to test in practical application. This desire was not merely personal, but flowed from the very nature of the ideas them- selves. For it was part of the philosophical and psychological theory he entertained that ideas, even as ideas, are incomplete and tentative until they are employed in application to objects in action and are thus developed, corrected, and tested. The need of a laboratory was indicated. Moreover, the inclusive scope of the ideas in question demanded something more than a laboratory of experimentation in its restricted technical sense. The materials with which they dealt were the continuing de- velopment of human beings in knowledge, understanding, and character. A school was the answer to the need.
3
4 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
During the years at Chicago, Mr. Dewey's thought along these lines was greatly stimulated and enriched. One of the important influences affecting the distinct advance in the psychological formulations of this period was the cooperative thinking and pooled results of a close-knit group of colleagues, all concentrating under one leadership. James R. Angell was then working out his ideas of functional psychology. George H. Mead, who earlier had been a colleague of Mr. Dewey's at the University of Michigan, was developing the psychology of the act on the basis of wide biological knowledge, and James H. Tufts collaborated with Mr. Dewey in a course for the parents of the school. These men and others in related depart- ments of the University made up a united and enthusiastic group of investigators and teachers.
Mr. Dewey's thinking was further supplemented by the work of the various study clubs of which he was a member and the groups of graduate and undergraduate students under his direc- tion. He early joined the Illinois Society for Child Study, which included among its members many able educators. In the trans- actions of this society, which were being watched and com- mented upon by leaders in psychological thinking, Mr. Dewey took an active part. A number of his earliest statements were published by this organization and by the newly organized National Herbart Society.
As a result of all this original and cooperative effort, there were gradually built up the psychological and sociological prin- ciples, which, together with their many implications, form the basis of Mr. Dewey's theory of education. Statements of these appeared from time to time in various periodicals and in other forms.1
i This selected list of statements published at the time contains the essential elements in Mr. Dewey's philosophy of education: (i) "The Re- sults of Child-Study Applied to Education," Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study, January, 1895; (a) "Interest as Related to Will," in National Herbart Society, Second Supplement to the Herbart Yearbook for 1895; (3) "The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology," Psychological Re- view, July, 1896; (4) "Pedagogy as a University Discipline," University (of Chicago) Record, September, 1896; (5) "Ethical Principles Underlying Education," in National Herbart Society, Third Yearbook (Chicago, 1897);
GENERAL HISTORY 5
Many of the interested group and their friends were parents, and the idea of a school which should test in practice these newly stated principles of education grew out of their desire that their own children should experience this kind of school- ing. The ideas of the group were formulated by Mr. Dewey in a privately printed brochure, "Plan of Organization of the University Primary School." This plan as summarized by Mr. Dewey follows.2
"Because of the idea that human intelligence developed in connection with the needs and opportunities of action, the core of school activity was to be found in occupations, rather than in what are conventionally termed studies. Study in the sense of inquiry and its outcome in gathering and retention of in- formation was to be an outgrowth of the pursuit of certain continuing or consecutive occupational activities. Since the development of the intelligence and knowledge of mankind has been a cooperative matter, and culture, in its broadest sense, a collective creation, occupations were to be selected which related those engaged in them to the basic needs of developing life, and demanded cooperation, division of work, and constant intellectual exchange by means of mutual com- munication and record. Since the integration of the individual and the social is impossible except when the individual lives in close association with others in the constant free give and take of experiences, it seemed that education could prepare the young for the future social life only when the school was itself a cooperative society on a small scale. Therefore, the first factor in bringing about the desired coordination of these occupations was the establishment of the school itself as a form of community life.
"The primary skills, in reading, writing, and numbers, were to grow out of the needs and the results of activities. More- over, since basic occupations involve relations to the materials and forces of nature, just as the processes of living together
(6) "Principles of Mental Development as Illustrated in Early Infancy," Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study, October, 1899; (7) The School and Society (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1899). 2 John Dewey. Written for the Authors.
6 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
involve social invention, organization, and establishment of human bonds, making the development of individuals secure and progressive, knowledge was to grow out of the active con- tact with things and energies inherent in consecutive activities. History, for instance, was to be a deepening and an extension of the process of human invention and integration. The de- velopment of character and the management of what is or- dinarily called discipline, were to be, as far as possible, the outgrowth of a shared community life in which teachers were guides and leaders. The substratum of the educative process was thus to develop from the idea that the young have native needs and native tendencies of curiosity, love of active occupa- tion, and desire for association and mutual exchange which provide the intrinsic leverage for educative growth in knowl- edge, understanding, and conduct
"The significance of these principles for the educational ex- periment that was undertaken can best be gathered from the account of the actual life of the school. The controlling aim of the school was not the aim of present progressive education. It was to discover and apply the principles that govern all hu- man development that is truly educative, to utilize the methods by which mankind has collectively and progressively advanced in skill, understanding, and associated life.
"The basic principle necessarily demanded a very consider- able break with the aims, methods, and materials familiar in the traditional school. It involved departure from the conception that, in the main, the proper materials and methods of educa- tion are already well-known and need only to be furthered, refined, and extended. It implied continual experimentation to discover the conditions under which educative growth actu- ally occurs. It implied also much more attention to present conditions in the life of individuals, children, and contem- porary society than was current in schools based chiefly upon the attainments of the past^t^mvolved the substitution of an active attitude of work and play and of inquiry for the pro- cesses of imposition and passive absorption of ready-made knowledge and preformed skills that largely dominated the traditional school. It implied a much larger degree of op-
GENERAL HISTORY 7
portunity for initiative, discovery, and independent communi- cation of intellectual freedom than was characteristic of the traditional school^)
-*s/
"Thus the nai^e J^&oratory. School (originally suggested by Ella Flagg Young), gives a Jkey^to. the work _Q! the. school. A laboratory-is, as ., the wor.gl implies, a place for activity, for1 work, for the consecutive carrying on of an occupation and in the case of education the occupation must be inclusive of all fundamental human values. A laboratory also implies di- rective ideas, leading hypotheses that, as they are applied, lead to new understandings. It demands also workers, who with- out being enslaved to the past, are acquainted with achieve- ments of the past in science and^arkjand who are possessed of the best skills that have been worked out by the cooperative efforts of human beings. Like every human enterprise the Laboratory School came far short of achieving its ideal and putting its controlling ideas into successful" 'operation. But some knowledge as to what the ideals and ideas were is neces- sary to give unity and coherence to an account of its detailed work."
The practical difficulties of creating a new school as com- pared with the formulation of theoretical principles were recognized from the start. The idea of education as growth was new. Since growth is the characteristic of all life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself; it goes on during the whole life span of the individual; it is the result of the constant adjustment of the individual to his physical and social environment which is thus both used and modified to supply his needs and those of his social groups. All these new theoretical statements presented practical difficulties. There were no precedents for this type of schooling to follow, and there was need to study the growing child in relation to his environment and to experiment with subject-matter and method to find what ministered best to his growth.
With faith in the soundness of the experimental approach to education that should test in practice the value of the theory, the school opened in January, 1896, in a private dwell- ing with sixteen pupils and two persons in charge. The first
8 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
six months was a "trial-and-error" period and was chiefly in- dicative of what not to do. The school reopened on a new basis in October, 1896, at 5718 Kimbark Avenue with thirty-two children ranging in age from six to eleven and a staff of three regular teachers, one in charge of science and the domestic arts, one of literature and history, and one of manual training. A part-time instructor in music was also on the staff, and three graduate students gave all or part of their time to the school. The school continued at these headquarters until January, 1897, when, owing to inadequate space, it removed to the old South Park Club House, at the corner of Rosalie Court and 57th Street. The number of teachers was increased and new pupilfiL-were received, making the enrolment forty-five.
By December, 1897, the staff of teachers had grown to six- teen, the children numbered sixty, and the school again faced the need of larger quarters. In October, 1898, the school opened in an old residence at 5412 Ellis Avenue. At this time the school took on its subsequent departmental form, thus har- monizing with the University. A sub-primary department was added to include children of four and five. Eighty-two children were enrolled. New quarters included a gymnasium and manual training rooms in a barn connected with the house by a covered way. Art and textile rooms occupied the large attic rooms. The science department had two laboratories, one for combined physics and chemistry, and one for biology. The history depart- ment shared three special rooms with the English department. Domestic science now had a kitchen large enough for two groups to work together and two dining rooms properly equipped for serving.
In these quarters the school entered upon another stage of its history. The experience of two years and a half of success and failure afforded a basis out of which there grew an ever developing curriculum. Through the years 1900, 1901, and 1905 the school continued to increase in numbers until it reached a maximum of one hundred and forty children. The teaching staff increased to twenty-three teachers and instructors with about ten assistants (graduate students of the University). With its increase in size the organization of the teaching staff
THE LAST HOME OF THE DEWEY SCHOOJL, 5412 ELLIS AVENUE,
CHICAGO
GENERAL HISTORY 9
had become more formal in character. Mr. Dewey continued as Director, and Ella Flagg Young of the Department of Educa- tion was Supervisor of Instruction. Mrs. Dewey's previous in- formal connection now became official as principal of the school. She was also director of the Department of English and literature, and had general oversight of the language ex- pression of the schpol. The relationship with the University continued as before, insuring stability and continuity to the work, as well as providing the advantages of expert advice, planning, and supervision of instruction.
The administration of the school was, particularly in its formative years, so much a matter of the cooperation of those directing and teaching that it is difficult to say where executive or administrative responsibilities ended and those of teaching began. As head of the Department of Pedagogy, Mr. Dewey was at all times head of the Laboratory School; but for the first three years of its existence the various administrative duties fell in great part to members of the teaching staff, were informally determined in conference with the director, and shifted constantly to meet temporary exigencies and changing needs. The teaching staff in these years, therefore, was the administra- tive, with the exception of certain administrative functions, chiefly financial, which were carried out by the University Department of Pedagogy. In later years when the greatly in- creased staff necessitated a more formal organization, the school was departmentalized, and while the administrative staff was still composed of teachers, a division of responsibility was made. One, as principal, took charge of all contacts with parents, graduate student-teachers, and visitors, and one, as vice- principal, continued to assume responsibility for the curricu- lum. At this time also, a supervisor from the Department of Pedagogy of the University was added to the staff. She also conducted classes with the pedagogical students working in the school and doing laboratory work as assistants,8 where the prin-
* Principal and director of history, Georgia Bacon, 1900-1901; principal and director of the language instruction, Alice Chipman Dewey, 1901- 1903; vice-principal and director of science, Katherine Camp; supervisor, Ella Flagg Young.
10 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
ciples and practices of the school were discussed and related. The early meetings, of the experimental years, however, being smaller, had included, in addition to the teachers, all of the Fellows, and most of the students and instructors in the Uni- versity's Department of Pedagogy.
In retrospect, the cooperation of the many departments of the University, particularly in all forms of science is acknowl- edged with gratitude. Heads of these departments, as well as individual staff members, were generous with their time and facilities. In addition to this whole-hearted aid in material ways, intellectual resources were freely put at the disposal of the teachers. Of immeasurable, stabilizing value was the re- lationship to the University. As the laboratory of the Depart- ment of Pedagogy, the school shared widi the other laboratories of the University die benefits of such intimate relationship. This gave an easy accessibility for teachers desiring it to many scientists who were, or since have become, leaders of thought and accomplishment in their various fields. Many of these men had, in addition to special attainments, unusual pedagogi- cal interests which led to their giving constant intellectual and material help to the teachers of the school.4
As time went on, it became clear that this experiment in education required also experimental administrative methods. A school that was a social institution modeled after the or- ganization of an ideal home required a special arrangement and organization of its directing factors. Instead of a group of
* Perhaps the University of Chicago possessed in the beginning many more scientists later to achieve international distinction than had been gathered together in any other new university. At that time Thomas G. Chamberlain was elaborating his planetesimal theory of the origin of the solar system and came to talk about it to the children. John M. Coulter planned and guided the experiments on plant relations. Others who co- operated were Charles O. Whitman in zoology, Jacques Loeb in physiology, W. I. Thomas and George Vincent in sociology, Frederick Starr in anthro- pology, Rollin D. Salisbury in geography, Albert A Michelson in physics, Alexander Smith in chemistry, and Henry C. Cowles in ecology. The school was indebted to numerous persons in other departments of the University especially to Mr. and Mrs. William D. MacClintock, to G. E. Hale, Wallace Atwood, and to the members of Mr. Dewey's departments for continuous cooperation particularly to George H. Mead, James H. Tufts, and James R. Angell.
GENERAL HISTORY n
persons who planned on paper a program which they then required a staff of teachers to teach to the pupils, these experi- menters were confronted with a different problem. The aid of the teachers (as well as of the pupils) was a fundamental and primary requisite to even the theoretical formulation of an educative program. Plainly, therefore, all three factors, administrators, teachers, pupils, must share in the functions of managing and executing the teacher-learning process. In- deed, such an experiment in education as this could not go on except through a group of persons all of whom were intel- lectually and socially cooperating in a constantly developing educational plan. In such an endeavor the parents of the chil- dren were also factors, whose help was essential in countless ways for the successful accomplishment of the experiment. The focus of all this cooperative endeavor was- the child— his physical and mental growth in a well-balanced and, therefore, happy fashion. Along many lines of approach help and sug- gestion flowed in and were integrated and correlated by the child's activities. At the request of the authors, Mr. Dewey has recently made the following comment on the relation of the theory to the practice in the actual working out of the school.
"In dealing with principles underlying school activities, it is easy, especially after a lapse of years, to read into a statement of them what one has learned in subsequent experience. An- other danger more serious and more difficult to avoid lies in the gap between any formal statement of principles and ideals and the way things work out in actual practice; in the tempta- tion to idealize the latter by assuming a greater conformity with theoretical principles than is attained. The concrete cir- cumstances of school life introduce many factors that are not foreseen and taken account of in theory. This is as formal and static as the life of teachers and children in school is moving and vital.
"The principles stated were not intended to serve as definite rules for what was done in the school. They furnished a point of View and indicated the direction in which it was to move. Not merely the concrete material, the subject matter of the pupils' studies, but the methods of teaching were developed
12 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
in the course of the school's own operations. This development signifies, of course, that the experience of one year taught something about what was to be done the next year and how it was to be better done. But it also meant something more than this,— material and methods which worked with one group of children would not give the same results with another group of supposedly about the same attainments and capacities, and quite radical changes would have to be introduced in the actual process of teaching."
The school always faced a serious financial situation. In five years it had outgrown three buildings, none of which had been adequately equipped. Because tuition fees had been kept low 5 for the sake of the parents who might otherwise have coveted in vain such an education for their children, there had been a yearly deficit. Each year, however, this deficit had been met by the parents and friends,' staunch supporters of the school who had caught a vision of its worth and meaning for their own and other children. At the beginning the University as- sured Mr. Dewey only the sum of $1,000 to cover the initial expense. This sum, moreover, was not in cash but in tuitions of graduate students who were to teach in the school. At the end of the first six months the generous gift of $1,200 by Mrs. Charles R. Linn enabled the school to begin anew in the fall of 1896 with a staff of three teachers. In the years following funds to cover the deficit were forthcoming from the loyal group of parents and friends.
In 1902, the Chicago Institute (formerly the Cook County Normal School of Chicago) heavily endowed by Mrs. Emmons Blaine, and the University of Chicago consummated a plan whereby the former became incorporated with the University. Two other schools had been included in the merger, the Chicago Manual Training School and the South Side Academy. The Chicago Institute was primarily a school for training teachers and was under the leadership of Colonel Francis W.
* Tuition paid in 1901-2 was as follows: for children from four to six years, $75.00 per year; for older children attending the forenoon session only, $90.00 per year; for children attending the afternoon session also, $105.00 per year.
GENERAL HISTORY 13
Parker. The faculty of the Institute numbered thirty-five per- sons. There were about one hundred students in the pedagogi- cal and one hundred and twenty in the academic departments, one of which was an elementary school and kindergarten. The University accordingly found itself possessing two elementary schools. One, a practice school for the training of teachers under the leadership of Colonel Parker, was heavily endowed. The other, the Laboratory School of the University's Depart- ment of Pedagogy directed by Mr. Dewey, had no endowment, but had been, even then, characterized as one of the "greatest experiments in education ever carried on." Both schools were progressive; both had made outstanding contributions to the principles and practice of education. But while similar in these larger aspects of general purpose, the two schools differed rather widely in theory, method, and practice.
For the solution of the problem thus presented, various plans ,had been discussed by the President and Trustees of the Uni- versity. Of these, two plans only seemed feasible. The first was to continue both schools as separate organizations; one, the Dewey School, to be a laboratory of the Department of Pedagogy of the University, the other to be a practice school for the training of elementary teachers. The difficulty, which seemed to make this plan impracticable, was the lack of endowment for the Dewey School. The only solution, apparently, was the second plan— merging the two schools. It had also been pro- posed that if the two elementary schools were merged, a new secondary school should be formed by combining the South Side Academy and the Chicago Manual Training School. Mr. Dewey was to be head of this secondary school, and it was to be regarded as part of the University's Department of Pedagogy so long as Mr. Dewey remained in charge of that Department. At the same time this secondary school was to be carried on in connection with the transplanted Chicago In- stitute.
The President and his Committee of Administrators, not having followed closely the development of the Laboratory School, made a serious error of judgment in supposing that the plan of merging the two elementary schools, so different in
i4 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
theory and method, would seem advisable or welcome to the parents, teachers, or administrators of the Dewey School. All parents, teachers, and administrators were in accord in their opinions that both schools would suffer from such procedure, and that the Dewey School, being the smaller, and bereft of its leader, would be swallowed up and lost in the larger school. Therefore, after much discussion and planning, they secured the permission of the University authorities to continue the school separately, under the official name of the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, provided they could raise and guarantee to the University for the space of three years the sum of $5,000 annually. A committee of parents, fired with zeal to save the school, raised this amount in a comparatively short time with pledges for the years to come, and for one year longer the school continued at the same place and under the same administration as before.
During this year (1903), however, Colonel Parker died, and negotiations for the amalgamation of the two schools were again resumed and finally consummated. Mr. Dewey accepted the directorship of the School of Education with his under- standing that the regular teaching and administrative staff of the Laboratory School was to be taken over by the School of Education and was to continue in office indefinitely. The Laboratory School accordingly moved into the newly com- pleted School of Education building in the fall of 1903, and the School of Education then became the united faculties, students, and administration of four schools, The Chicago Institute, The Chicago Manual Training School, The Uni- versity of Chicago Laboratory School, and the South Side Academy.
It seems fitting at this point to quote briefly an address by Mr. Dewey on the occasion of the first combined meeting of the parents of the four schools which had joined forces to become the School of Education. Upon the background of die history of these four schools, he states the ideal of the School of Education as he conceived it: 6
e John Dewey, "Significance of the School of Education," The Elementary School Teacher f March, 1904.
GENERAL HISTORY 15
"The significance of the School of Education, put in terms of its origin, lies in the bringing together of all factors of the educational problem. ... It now incarnates in itself all the elements which constitute the theoretical educational problem of the present. In other words, we have right here in concrete, actual institutional form all the factors which any writer on education of the present day would lay down as involved in the problem of education. We have the so-called practical and utilitarian element. This comes not merely from the Chicago Manual Training School, but from the stress laid from the first in the Cook County Normal School (Chicago Institute) upon manual training, and the important place given in the Laboratory School to social occupations. Thus the motor, die executive side of the individual is appealed to. The School of Education recognizes that an "all-around education" is a mere name if it leaves out of account direct interest in seeing things and in doing things. The so-called practical and utilitarian factor is thus here not an isolated and independent thing, but the utilization of an otherwise wasted (and hence perverted) source of energy. But the School also stands for the most thorough-going recognition of the importance of scientific and cultural elements in education. Moreover, the School stands for these things, not merely within its own structure, but through the training of teachers and the promulgation of sound educational theory for educational progress and reform far beyond itself. . . . To have initiated these distinct and in- dependent portions of an educational system represented here, was a great achievement. To stop here, not to recognize the growth that may come from their fusing into a vital whole, would be a calamity all the greater because of what has been achieved in the past. . . .
"Such growth can only come as a result of the cooperative effort of teachers, parents, and children. There is one kind of coeducation to which no one takes objections— one which is absolutely indispensable if the future of the school is to be as significant as its own past exacts of it. This coeducation of teachers, children, and parents by one another. I say by one another rather than with one another, for I think that coeduca-
i6 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
tion is not the passive reception of the same instruction side by side, but the active participation in the education of one by others. If the School is to move along steadily and as a whole within itself, it must be because it moves along with a body of parents who have intrusted their children to it, and because in turn the parents move along sympathetically with the endeavors, experiments, and changes of the school it- self. . . .
"In spite of all the advances that have been made through- out the country, there is still one unsolved problem in ele- mentary and secondary education. That is the question of duly adapting to each other the practical and utilitarian, the ex- ecutive and the abstract, the tool and the book, the head and the hand. This is a problem of such vast scope that any systematic attempt to deal with it must have great influence upon the whole course of education everywhere. The School of Education, both in its elementary and secondary departments, is trying to make its contribution to this vexed question. Utility and culture, absorption and expression, theory and practice, are indispensable elements in any educational scheme. But, as a rule, they are pursued apart. As already indicated, the dif- ferent schools which have entered into combination here make it necessary for the School of Education to fuse hitherto sep- arated factors. In this attempt we shall need your sympathetic intelligence. . . .
"In the second place, I wish to enlist your sympathy with the social ideals and spirit which must prevail in the School of Education, if it is to be true to its own past. We trust, and shall continue to trust, to the social spirit as the ultimate and controlling motive in discipline. We believe, and our past ex- perience warrants us in the belief, that a higher, more effective, more truly severe type of personal discipline and government may be secured through appeal to the social motives and in- terests of children and youth than to their antisocial ones. . . . It must be possible on some other basis to secure and main- tain a wholesome social and moral spirit in the school. It can- not be too definitely stated that it is only to this class that the
GENERAL HISTORY 17
School of Education wants to appeal for members of its stu- dent body. . . . The moral and social influence which the members of the student body exert upon each other is far more potent for good in the long run than any device that teachers can set up and keep going; and the presence or absence of this influence must go back largely to home influences and sur- roundings.
"The School of Education wishes particularly, then, the co- operation of parents in creating a healthy moral tone which will render quite unnecessary resort to lower and more un- worthy motives for regulating conduct, in the cultivation of a democratic tone, an esprit-de-corps, which attaches itself to the social life of the school as a whole, and not to some clique or set in it, ... May we remind you that a school has a corporate life of its own; that, whether for good or bad, it is itself a genuine social institution— a community. The in- fluences which center in and radiate from this corporate social life are infinitely more important with respect to the moral development of your children than is simply class-room in- struction in the abstract. May I close with an exhortation to bear in mind the fundamental importance to yourselves and to your children, as well as to the School, of the maintenance of the right sort of social aims and spirit throughout the school as a whole."
These words seemed to promise a new era of fulfilment and expansion for the ideals of the Laboratory School. Those who had piloted this ship on its seven-year voyage of discovery thought at last they had found fair sailing. It proved, how- ever, only a brief season of good passage, for Mr. Dewey's resignation followed in the spring of 1904. This action was quite as unpremeditated on his part as it was unexpected to his associates. Early in the spring he was told that at the time of the merging of the four schools assurances had been given to the Trustees of the Chicago Institute that certain members of the administrative staff of the elementary school would be eliminated at the close of the first year after the merger. Mr. Dewey had been entirely ignorant of these assurances, found
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himself unable to accept them and resigned, first as Director of the School of Education and shortly after as Head of the Departments of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy.
Only the passing of time has made it possible to state the reasons for this unhappy ending to so many relationships and undertakings. With the resignation of Mr. Dewey and the subsequent dispersal of all save three or four of the faculty of the Laboratory School, this experiment in education ended. The brief year of union with the School of Education at Chi- cago marked the close of the career of the Laboratory School, as the present School of Education can in no sense be regarded as the heir of either its purposes or its methods. There are many progressive schools which have extended the work of the Dewey School along certain lines, but nowhere has its closely knit social organization of children, parents, teachers in a uni- versity laboratory been achieved. Owing perhaps to the mech- anized character of American life; there has been a distinct failure on the part of modern progressive schools to appreciate what the fundamental occupations of living— cooking, sewing, carpentry, and all principal manual- training activities— may do when clarified and organized as a means, par excellence, of preserving the investigative attitude and the creative ability of the growing child in socially directed expression. Day by day he gains both in his skill to control situations and to direct his own activity to further and more desired ends; he also becomes gradually conscious of his gain. This results in an integrated child, able to work more and more on his own initiative and under his own guidance— a child who is matur- ing, who is both educating and being educated, and whose education continues throughout life.
When the four schools united, there were, from the Labora- tory School, a number of children who had received in that school practically all of their education. Although their cur- riculum had always been different from that of the children of the other schools, it was said of them a few months later, "Either these are exceptional children, or they have been ex- ceptionally trained." They were, however, like other children of varying degrees of ability and types of temperament. They
GENERAL HISTORY 19
were exceptional only as they represented a group of parents who had caught a vision of a sort of education which they desired to have their children experience.
The sense of frustration with which these parents viewed the apparent shipwreck of their high hopes was to some degree lessened by the conviction that what they had desired had been for a brief time fulfilled. As the years passed they grew more and more comforted by the fact that what had seemed to die, continued to live, and was extending its influence throughout America, and even to foreign lands, such as China, and Mexico; to the early schools of Soviet Russia and to those of many European countries.
CHAPTER II
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM
-LHE Laboratory School was both a department of the Uni- versity and a place where parents sent children to be educated. As such it required conditions which would insure freedom for investigation on the one hand, and normal development for child life on the other. This meant the planning of a curricu- lum which was not static in character, but one which minis- tered constantly to the changing needs and interests of the growing child's experience. It involved careful arrangement of the physical and social set-up of the school and a discriminat- ing search for subject-matter which would fulfil and further the growth of the whole child. It meant study and 6bservation in order that the materials and agencies used to present this subject-matter should be in agreement with the child's chang- ing attitudes and abilities, and would link what was valuable in his past experience to his present and his future. It required experimentation as to classroom methods in the use of this material so that it entered vitally into growth in such a way that control gained by the child in one situation might be carried on to the next, thus insuring continuity of experience, a habit of initiative, and an increasing skill in the use of the experimental method. As a child's social growth is largely a matter of adaptation to group relations, it was of primary importance that the subject-matter selected should be social in character and thus give free play to the child's group be- havior and guide the expression of his individual interests toward social ends. It was important that the guidance should be of such a character that the child never felt imposed upon
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 21
by adult standards, but developed his own standards out of habitual social behavior, that is, behavior free from conscious competition or biased criticism of others' products.
The task that lay before those who worked out the educa- tional implications of these newly formed theories was a dif- ficult one. It was difficult because it necessitated the discard- ing of many established methods of teaching and learning. It meant the careful study of the story of education, especially of those periods and types of civilization when there was no rift between experience and knowledge, when information about things and ways of doing grew out of social situations and represented answers to social needs, when the education of the immature member of society proceeded almost wholly^ through participation in the social or community life of which*' he was a member, and each individual, no matter how young, did certain things in the way of work and play along with others, and learned, thereby, to adjust himself to his surround- ings, to adapt himself to social relationships, and to get control of his own special powers.
"He must learn by experience" is an old adage too little heeded by modern methods of schooling. Too often these meth- ods take for granted that there is a short cut to learning, and that knowledge apart from its use has meaning for the develop- ing mind. The memorizing of such knowledge has come to be a large part of present-day education, with the result that great masses of young lives have been denied the thrill of experi- mental living, of finding the way for themselves, of discovery, of invention, of creation. The fine aspiring tendril of child- hood's native curiosity, like the waving tip of a growing vine, seeks the how and why of doing— its intellectual food. It is early stunted in many children. The strong urge to investigate, present in every individual, is often crushed by the memorizing of great masses of information useless to him, or the learning of skills that he is told may be useful to him in the far-away future, the sometime, and the somewhere. Only those in whom the urge to know will not be denied break away into new trails by virtue of individual and experimental effort, and when directed in the use of the scientific method, climb to the
22 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
highest peaks of living; the majority travel a wide made-easy way of schooling into a dead level of mediocrity.
It was necessary, therefore, for these experimenters in a new practice to ignore and forget certain practices and precepts of the old psychology. They must hold steadily before their mental eyes the newer psychological principles and chart a course of pedagogical thinking and practice. This new psychology recog- nized that the normal functioning mind of the child cannot operate or develop alone in a physical world. It requires, in addition to the continual stimulus of first-hand experience, that of contact with other minds and social agencies, and of recourse to the accumulated knowledge and past experience of the race. In other words, educative schooling must furnish a social and intellectual as well as a physical environment, in which the child may become increasingly familiar with all kinds of relationships and be trained to consider them so far as is necessary in his individual and experimental activities. In general, the problem and purpose of this new type of school- ing was, first of all, to aid the child to develop his own in- dividuality by expression of his ideas in deed as well as in word, and thus become a freely maturing person. Always, however, it was an important duty of those guiding this process to help the child gradually to shape his expressions to social ends, and thus make them, through his growing control, more and more effective in the corporate life of the group.
Such free use of his powers by every child presupposes that he be studied and understood. Those planning the activities must see each child as an ever changing person, both because of what he undertakes and undergoes in his social group, and because of the changing needs of the succeeding stages of his development. They must carefully select and grade the ma- terials used, altering such selection, as is necessary in all ex- perimentation, in accord with the available materials, whether at hand or remote.
The plan for the life of the school, in this experiment of education, was a simplified and ordered continuation of the life of the home. In this environment, both new and familiar, the child, conscious of no break in his experience, could learn
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 23
to become a useful member of a larger social group. Guided and stimulated to social action, he would naturally judge the value of his action by the responses of others. He gets the feel and the thrill of using his individual powers for social ends and becomes more and more expert in making his contribu- tion socially effective. Cooperative effort involves interest in and consideration of others; he more and more naturally be- comes alert to their needs and generous to share with them his opportunities. An increasing fund of personally tested knowl- edge accumulates from these experiments in human relation- ships and becomes the foundation upon which he builds his future social ideals. Increasing confidence in himself as the guiding agent of his activities makes him a recognized and responsible member of the group with the result that he is an increasingly integrated and happy child, because he is satisfied, adjusted to, and helpful in the control and modification of his physical and social environments.
In the ideal back of the plan two cardinal principles were held in mind. First, in all educative relationships the starting point is the impulse of the child to action, his desire respond- ing to the surrounding stimuli and seeking its expression in concrete form. Second, the educational process is to supply the materials and the positive and negative conditions— the let and hindrance— so that his expression, intellectually controlled, may take a normal direction that is social in both form and feeling. These principles determined the entire school's opera- tion and organization, as a whole and in detail. Study and performance of the basic and simplified occupations of life taught teachers and children how to do. In finding how to do, sense became alert to note and select materials to do with. Interest made minds receptive to facts and the best ways of doing. Knowledge became the child of experience, and the way of learning an alluring one. It was, however, often a difficult one to find. There were many false leads followed, but in the end a faint trail was made to which the hope still clings that it may prove the pathway to the promised land.
Starting with the activities familiar and natural to little children (fundamental and familiar activities of the home),
24 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
the school conceived itself as an institution intermediate be- tween the home and the larger school organization of the com- munity, growing naturally out of the one and into the other. All activity having to do with such basic and continuing needs of life as shelter, clothing, and food became the central focus of a developing curriculum. With this unifying factor, all life, whether of the home, school, or larger community, was seen as one and the same continuous, changing social life. Similarly the infant, the school child, and the grown man were recog- nized as one and the same, though changing, individual. In consequence, the story of the corporate life of this school is a biography, for it was as truly a living, growing organism as was any of its smaller or larger members.
In the informal address to the parents and teachers toward the close of the third year of the school, Mr. Dewey gave a somewhat detailed account of the practices of the school in relation to its theoretical principles. Extracts from the steno- graphic notes of the address serve to give a bird's-eye view of the way in which the studies and activities of its curriculum were related or grew out of the daily experience of the chil- dren. These extracts are supplemented by portions of a circular published during the school's first year,1
"When the school was started, there were certain points which it seemed worth while to test—four questions, or prob- lems in mind. First, what can be done, and how can it be done, to bring the school, now a place where the child comes, learns certain lessons, and then goes home, into closer relation with the home and neighborhood life; how bridge the gap, and break down the traditional barriers, which unfortunately now separate the school from the rest of the child's everyday life? This does not mean, as sometimes interpreted, that the child should study in school things he already has learned at home, but that, so far as possible, he should take the same attitude and point of view at school as at home; that he should feel the same interest in going to school because he finds there things worth doing for their own sake and just as interesting as
i John Dewey, "The University Elementary School, Studies and Methods/' University Record, May 31, 1897.
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 25
the plays and occupations of his home and neighborhood. Again, the same motives which keep the child at work and growing should be used in the school as in the home, so that he shall not feel that he has one set of reasons which belongs to the school and another which is used in the home.
"Second, how can history and science and art be introduced so that they will be of positive value and have real significance in the child's own present experience? How can they be made to represent, even to the youngest child, something worthy of attainment in skill or knowledge; something just as worthy to him because it is, at his level, as truly satisfying intellectually and emotionally as anything a high school or college student might be able to get at his period of education? It is true, many modifications have been made in the traditional primary cur- riculum of most schools. Statistics recently collected, however, show that seventy-five to eighty per cent of the first years of a child in school is spent upon the form, not the substance of learning; is given to the mastering of the symbols of read- ing, writing, and arithmetic. There is not much positive nutri- ment in this. Its purpose is important, but it does not represent the same kind of addition or increase in a child's whole in- tellectual and moral experience that is represented by the posi- tive subject-matter, now postponed to the later years of the child's education. One purpose, then, of the experiment is to see how much can be given to the child of the experiences of the world about him that is really worth his while to get; how far first-hand experience with the forces in that world and knowledge of its historical and social growth will enable him to develop the capacity to express himself in a variety of artistic forms. From the strictly educational side this has been the chief problem of the school. It is along this line that we hope to make our chief contribution to education in general. To this end, those subjects which have a positive content and intrinsic value of their own, and which call forth the inquiring and constructive attitude on the part of the pupil are made the core of the school work.
"In the third place, how can instruction in the formal, symbolic branches of learning—the mastering of the ability
26 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
to read, write, and use figures Intelligently— be gained out of other studies and occupations as their background? How can the child be made to regard symbols as instruments and meth- ods needful in his study of those subjects which appeal to him on their own account? It is clear that need, when felt by the child, would supply the motive for getting technical capacity, and the question of the adjustment of these two sides of the work would be solved. It is not the purpose, as has been stated, of this school that the child learn to bake and sew at school, and to read, write, and figure at home. It is true, however, that these subjects of reading, writing, etc., are not presented dur- ing the early years in large doses. Instead, the child is led by other means to feel the motives for acquiring skill in the use of these symbols, motives which persist when competition, often the only motive in the early years of many schools, ceases. In this school, as well as in all schools, if a child realizes the motive for acquiring skill, he is helped in large measure to secure the skill. Books and the ability to read are, therefore, regarded strictly as tools. The child must learn to use these, just as he would any other tools. This implies that he shall have arrived at some conception of what they are for and have some end in view or motive for using them, and that the actual learning to read shall grow out of this motive. Accordingly, no special effort is made to teach children to read in the sixth year, or even in the seventh, unless the indications are that the child is awakening to his needs in that direction. The pre- mature teaching of reading, in the present school system, in- volves undue strain on the eyes and the nervous system, takes time away from subjects which have a positive content, and devotes it to a purely formal study, which the child can master with much less strain and more quickly when he is ready for it. The aim is thus to familiarize the child with the use of language as a means of discovering something otherwise un- known and of sharing with others what he himself has found out. Hence reading is taught in close connection with other subjects, science and history, not as a subject by itself. As soon as the child has an idea what reading is for and has a certain amount of technical facility, printed material is supplied him,
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 27
not as a text-book, but as an additional tool in his equipment. The prevalent use of text-books has two evils. First, the child forms a habit of depending upon them and comes almost in- stinctively to assume that the book is the chief, if not the only way, of getting information. Then, the use of books, as texts, throws the mind into a passive and absorbing attitude. The child is learning instead of inquiring.
"In the fourth place, individual attention is secured by small groupings of children and a large number of teachers, who attempt to supervise systematically the intellectual and phys- ical work of the child. This insures attention, so far as those in charge are capable of giving it, to the general well-being and development of each child. It also enables them to carry on in connection with school work a certain amount of in- vestigation of the psychological and physiological needs and powers of individual children. . . .
'The use of the hand, and other motor organs in connection with the eye, is the great instrument through which the chil- dren most easily and naturally gain experience and come in contact with the familiar materials and processes of ordinary life. It affords unrivalled means for securing and holding at- tention. It is full of opportunities for cultivating the social spirit through the opportunities it affords for division of labor and mutual cooperation, and supplies the child with motives for working in ways positively useful to the community of which he is a member. The use of the hand is again the best possible instrument for cultivating habits of industry and con- tinuity in work, and of securing personal deftness and dexterity at the plastic period. When conducted in a free instead of mechanical spirit, it develops more than any other one in- strumentality, ingenuity in planning and power in execution. The constant testimony is that nothing compares with it as a means of arousing the child to a positive sense of his own power, and of encouraging him in expression and construc- tion. Furthermore, such training affords constantly recurring opportunities for related work in other directions. Cooking, for example, is a natural avenue of approach to simple but fundamental chemical facts and principles and to a study of
s>8 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
the plants as articles of food. Similarly, a study of the ma- terials and processes involved is carried on in connection with sewing, and includes a study of the history of invention, of geography (localities of production and manufacturing, with lines of distribution), and of the growth and cultivation of plants, like cotton and flax which furnish the raw material. Recourse to measurement is had in these subjects. The car- pentry work, in particular, constantly calls for calculation and gives the child a command of numerical processes in a related way, and a genuine number sense is thus cultivated. Three main lines of manual training are pursued regularly, shop- work with wood and tools, the cooking, and the work with the textile fabrics. There is also much other hand-work in- cident to the experimental sciences. Indeed experience verifies the statement that hand-work, in variety and amount, is the most easy and natural of all ways to keep an attitude of com- bined effort and interest on the part of the child. The purpose, therefore, of those teaching and directing is to direct these activities, to systematize and organize them so that they shall not be as haphazard and wandering as they customarily are in child's play and home life. One of the most difficult problems is to enable the children to work continuously and definitely, and to help them pass from one phase of an activity to another. "Carpentry, cooking, sewing, and weaving— all require dif- ferent sorts of skill and represent, as well, some of the most important industries of the everyday outside world. The ques- tions of living under shelter, of living in a home, of daily food and clothing, of protection through the home, and the support of life through food are basic things for all higher civilization. A child's interests are so direct and immediate that these things appeal to him. He gets through such activities, also, a training of the sense organs, of touch, of eye, and the ability to co- ordinate hand and eye. They furnish, as well, a healthy sort of exercise. They are more natural to child life than to keep continually quiet, to work at a book, or to engage in more formal modes of action. In addition, there is a continual ap- peal to memory, to judgment in adapting ends to means. Train-
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 29
ing in habits of order, of industry, and of neatness in the care of tools, or utensils are also by-products, for the child gets at things in a systematic instead of a haphazard way.
"All the children (boys and girls being treated alike) have cooking, sewing, and carpentry, besides incidental work with paper and pasteboard. From one to two hours a week are given to sewing, cooking, and carpentry respectively. Each group of children prepares its own luncheon once a week, being re- sponsible for the setting of the table, reception of guests, and the serving of the meal. This is found to afford a positive motive for the cooking, as well as to give it a social value. In the carpentry shop no rigid series of exercises is followed. The aim is to adapt the tools and materials to the muscular and mental power of the child. The things made are, in the first place, the articles needed in the school work. For example, wands, dumb-bell racks, and wand-racks have been made for the gymnasium, and simple balances, with lead weights, test- tube racks, and simple experimental apparatus, for the labora- tory. All of this active individual experience makes a back- ground, especially in the earlier groups, for the later studies. Children get a good deal of chemistry in connection with cook- ing, of number-work and geometrical principles in connection with their theoretical work in carpentry, and quite an amount of geography very easily and naturally in connection with sew- ing. History enters in as the story of industrial development and growth of various inventions.
"Upon the whole, greater attention has been given to the relation of the positive subject-matter to the activity program, than to any other one aspect. History is introduced at a very early period and is conducted on the principle that it is a means of affording the child insight into social life. It is treated, therefore, not as a record of something which is past and gone, but as a way of realizing what enters into the make-up of society and of how society has grown to be what it is. Treated thus, as a mode of insight into social life, great emphasis is laid upon the typical relations of humanity to nature, as summed up in the development of food, shelter, habitation,
3o THE DEWEY SCHOOL
clothing, and industrial occupations. This affords insight into the fundamental processes and instruments which have con- trolled the development of civilization and also affords natural and frequent opportunities for adjusting the work in history to that in manual training on the one side, and to science on the other.
"The younger children begin with the home and the occupa- tions of the home. In the sixth year (of the child) these lead to a study of the occupations outside the home, the larger social industries—farming, mining, lumbering—that they may see the complex and various occupations on which life de- pends. They experiment with raw materials, with the various metals and observe materials new to them, noting what they are like and their uses. This makes a beginning of scientific study.
"The following year takes up the historical development of industry and invention. Starting with man as a savage, the typical phases of his progress upward are followed, until the iron age is reached when man has begun to enter upon a civi- lized career. The object of this study of the primitive period is not to keep the child in the primitive period, but rather to show him the steps of progress and development, especially along the line of invention, by which man was led into civiliza- tion. There is a certain nearness, after all in the child, to primitive forms of life. It is much more simple, and by throw- ing emphasis on the progress of man and the way advances took place, it is hoped to avoid the objections that are made, and validly so, of paying too much attention to savage life,
"It is at this point that the study of history, as such, really begins, as the story of primitive life cannot properly be called history. In the school about this time a year was given to the world wide explorations and discoveries, which developed an idea of the world as a whole and served as an introduction to the history of the settlements in America. Study of the early fur traders of North America, who established the trade routes, led naturally to the settlement of Chicago. This with some local history prefaced the general American history of the next two or three years. Greek and Roman history were then in-
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 31
troduced, and finally, the regular chronological order of the development of civilization is adopted.
"As regards the study of literature, perhaps the most striking departure from methods pursued in other progressive schools is that literature is regarded as a social expression. It is ap- proached, therefore, through the medium of history, instead of studying history through the medium of literature. This method puts the latter subject in its proper perspective, and avoids the danger of distracting and over-stimulating the child with stories which to him (however they may be to the adult) are simply stories. In developing the work upon Greek life, for example, it was found that practically all the books for children are composed from the strictly literary side. Many of them in addition make the myth fundamental, instead of an incident to the intellectual and social development of the Greek people.
"Both nature study (that is the study through observation of obvious natural phenomena) and experimental work are in- troduced from the beginning. The science is very much more difficult to arrange and systematize. There is so little to follow, so little that has been already done. It is impossible to exag- gerate this statement. The slight amount of work in science that has been developed in any systematic way for the use of children, which purposes to cultivate their powers of noting the habits of plants and animals and of observing things with reference to their uses, is almost negligible. The earth is, per- haps, the focus for the science study as practically all of the work relates to it sooner or later, and in one way or another.
"Children of six as well as those of ten work in the labora- tory, and with equal profit, both as regards the development of their intelligence and the acquisition of skill and dexterity in manipulation. The attempt is not to give them analytic knowledge of objects or minute formulations of scientific prin- ciples, either of which are incomprehensible to a child of this age. The object is to arouse his spirit of curiosity and investiga- tion and awaken him to a consciousness of the world in which he lives, to train the powers of observation, to instil a practical sense of methods of inquiry, and gradually to form in the mind
32 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
images of the typical moving forces and processes involved in all natural change. The results thus far show an eager and definite response to this mode of approach.
"Another aspect of the science studied is the application of natural forces to the service of man through machines. Last year a good deal of work was done in electricity, based on the telegraph and the telephone. Things that could easily be grasped were taken up. In mechanics, they have studied locks and clocks with reference to the adaptation of the various parts of the machinery to accomplish their work. Cooking also gives opportunity for unconscious absorption of a great many me- chanical ideas of heat and water. In general, the scientific work in this school differs from that of other schools in having the experimental part of both physics and chemistry emphasized. It does not confine the science work to nature study, the study of plants and animals. This does not imply, that the latter is less valuable, but does maintain that physical science should be brought into the program from the first, by introducing larger generalizations in a story form.
"As regards the spirit of the school, the chief object is to secure a free and informal community life in which each child will feel that he has a share and his own work to do. This is made the chief motive towards what are ordinarily termed order and discipline. It is believed that the only genuine order and discipline are those which proceed from the child's own respect for the work which he has to do and his consciousness of the rights of others who are, with himself, taking part in this work. As already suggested, the emphasis in the school upon various forms of practical and constructive activity gives ample opportunity for appealing to the child's social sense and to his regard for thorough and honest work.
"Genuine, as distinct from artificial, moral growth is meas- ured by the extent to which children practically recognize in the school the same moral motives and relations that obtain outside. This can be secured only when the school contains the social conditions and presents the flexible, informal relations that prevail in everyday life. When school duties and responsi- bilities are of a sort found only in the school, comparatively
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 33
little aid is secured for the all-round healthy development of character. When school conditions are so rigid and formal as not to parallel anything outside the school, external order and decorum may be secured, but there is no guarantee of right growth in directions demanded by the ordinary walks of life. When what is expected of children is based on the require- ments of school lessons and school order, as laid down by text- book or teacher, not by work of positive value to those doing it, external habits of attention and restraint may be formed, but not power of initiative and direction, nor moral self- control. Hence the emphasis in the school laid upon social oc- cupations, which continue and reinforce those of life outside the school, and the comparative freedom and informality ac- corded the children. These are means, not an end. Moral re- sponsibility is secured only by corresponding freedom. Hence the school work on the moral side is to be judged, not by pass- ing external occurrences or external evidences or attitudes, but by its efficiency in promoting healthy growth of character in the child and a general modification of disposition and motive, both of which are slow processes and not sudden transforma- tions.
"For genuine intellectual development it is impossible to separate the attainment of knowledge from its application. The divorce between learning and its use is the most serious defect of our existing education. Without the consciousness of ap- plication, learning has no motive to the child. Material thus learned is separated from the actual conditions of the child's life, and a fatal split is introduced between school learning and vital experience— a split which reflects itself in the child's whole mental and moral attitude. The emphasis in the school upon constructive and so-called manual work is due largely to the fact that such occupations connect themselves easily and naturally with the child's everyday environment. They create natural motives for the acquiring of information and the mas- tery of related methods through the problems which they introduce.
"As to methods, the aim is to keep alive and direct the active inquiring attitude of the child, and to subordinate the amass-
34 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
ing of facts and principles to the development of intellectual self-control and of power to conceive and solve problems. Im- mense damage is done whenever the getting of a certain quantity of information or the covering a certain amount of ground is made the end, at the expense of mastery by each child, of a method of inquiry and of reflection. If children can retain their natural investigating tendencies unimpaired, gradually organizing them into definite methods of work, when they reach the proper age, they can master the required amount of facts and generalizations easily and effectively. Whereas, when the latter are forced upon them at so early a period as to crush the natural interest in searching out new truths, acquiring tends to replace inquiring.
"The social spirit of the school thus furnishes the controlling moral motive of the child. His own alert inquiring attitude is his intellectual spur. Along with this goes the possibility of attention to individuals as such. For purposes of convenience the children are divided into small groups of eight to twelve according to the kind of work and the age of the children. It is expected that the teacher will give attention to the specific powers and deficiencies of each child, so that the individual capacities will be brought out, and individual limitations made good. This attention extends to the physical as well as the in- tellectual side. Each child receives a personal physical exami- nation in the gymnasium, and all defects are reported to the parent in order that the child may have the special exercises needed to build him up. He also is examined in the psycho- logical laboratory of the University, with reference to his sense organs and motor powers. Almost twenty per cent of the chil- dren in the school have been thus far reported to their parents as needing either special exercises or the attention of a com- petent medical specialist to the eyes, ears, or throat.
"The School is often called an experimental school. In one sense this is the proper name, for it is an experiment school—- with reference to education and educational problems in which an attempt is being made to find by experience whether and how these problems may be worked out, A characteristic of experiment is change or modification of the original method
EXPERIMENTAL BASIS OF CURRICULUM 35
or plan. There are two points upon which the ideas and policy of the school have been modified, where the point of view has changed in process. When the school was small, it was intended to mix up the children,— the older and the younger— to the end that the younger might learn unconsciously from the older. There seemed moral advantages to both, in having the older assume certain responsibilities in the care of the younger. As the school grew, it became necessary to abandon this policy and to group the children with reference to their common capabilities or store of knowledge. These groups are based not on ability to read, write, etc., but on the basis of community of interest, general intellectual capacity and mental alertness, and the ability to do certain kinds of work. In other ways, however, children of different groups are still mingling, as they move about and come in contact with different teachers. Thus the gap between groups is bridged and the step-ladder system of the public school avoided. . . .
"The children also meet in general 'assemblies for singing and for the report of the school work as read by different mem- bers of the groups. All hear the report of what each group is doing. This mixture of the ages is also secured by giving to the older children for a half hour a week, responsibility for the work of some of the younger groups. This enables them, especially in hand-work, to enter into the activity of the younger children by cooperating with them.
"As a result of experience, the other chief modification has been with regard to specialization on the part of teachers. It was assumed, at first, that an all-round teacher would be the best, and perhaps it would be advisable to have one teacher teach the children in several branches. This theory, however, has been abandoned, and it has been thought well to secure teachers who are specialists by taste and training— experts along different lines. One of the reasons for this modification of the original plan was the difficulty of getting scientific facts pre- sented that were facts and truths. It has been assumed that any phenomenon that interested a child was good enough, and that if he were aroused and made alert, that was all that could be expected. It is, however, just as necessary that what he gets
36 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
should be truth and should not be subordinated to anything else. The training of observation by having the child see wrong is not so desirable as sometimes it has been thought to be. The difficulty of getting scientific work presented except by those who were specialists has led to the change in regard to other subjects as well.
"On the other hand, however, it has been recognized that, in the effort to avoid the serious evils of the first situation, there is a tendency to swing from one extreme to the other. That when specialists are employed the result is often that each does his work independently of the other, and the unity of the child's life is thus sacrificed to the tastes and acquisitions of a number of specialists. It seemed, however, not a question of the specialist but of the expert. When manual training, art, science, and literature are to be taught, it is a physical and mental impossibility that one person should be competent in all these lines of work. Superficial work is bound to be done in some one of them, and the child, through not having a model of expert workmanship to follow, acquires careless and imperfect methods of work. The school, accordingly, is en- deavoring to put the various lines of work in charge of experts who maintain agreement and harmony through continued con- sultation and cooperation. When the different studies and oc- cupations are controlled by reference to the same general principles, unity of aim and method are secured. The results obtained justify the belief that the undue separation, which often follows teaching by specialists, is a result of lack of super- vision, cooperation, and control by a unified plan."
This principle of guidance by experts referred to by Mr. Dewey was continued throughout the school's existence and was fundamental to the plan. Experience showed that the so- cial spirit of the school successfully avoided the dangers of too narrow and therefore isolated specialization in subject-matter and method.
PART II
THE CURRICULUM-SOCIAL OCCUPATIONS
CHAPTER III
EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICES DEVELOPING THE CURRICULUM
studying the developing curriculum of the Laboratory School, two periods may be recognized. The practices of the first period (1896 to 1898) were largely experimental and guided by the theoretical premises of its hypothesis, native in- sight as to the nature of children, practical acquaintance with certain fields of subject-matter, and first-hand experience in the use of scientific method. Those of the second period (1898 to 1903) grew out of or were revised on the basis of the courses and methods that had proved successful in the first.
In plannmgji. school, program that was to be an experiment in cooperative living, the child was the person of first concern. There were certain theoretical premises in its underlying hypothesis— certain general principles— which were to be aids in understanding its purposes and in guiding its practices.
1 "The primary business of school is to train children in co- operative and mutually helpful living, to foster in them the consciousness of interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds. The primary root of all educative activity is in the in- stinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child. . . . Accordingly, the numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays, games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of infants are capable of educational use, are the foundation-stones of educational method.
"These individual tendencies and activities are only organized and exercised through their use in an actual process of co-
ijohn Dewey, "Froebel's Educational Principles,'* Elementary School Record, No. i, February, 1900.
39
4o THE DEWEY SCHOOL
operative living; the best results follow when such a process reproduces on the child's plane the typical doings and occupa- tions of the larger, maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and it is only through such productive and creative use that valuable knowledge is secured and clinched."
FOUR NATIVE IMPULSES
The problem therefore became one of how to utilize the child's individual tendencies, his original impulses to express himself with such growing power and skill as to help him contribute with increasing effectiveness to the life of his group. For purposes of convenience, these native impulses are roughly classified and described by Mr. Dewey under four heads: the social, the constructive, the investigative, and the expressive.
The social impulse of a little child is shown in his desire to share with his family and others the experiences of his limited world. This self-centered interest in his own immediate en- vironment is capable of a continuing expansion; it is the tap- root of his intellectual life. His desire to tell about things, to share his ideas with others, takes advantage of all possible ways of expression and communication and influences his growth profoundly. The language instinct, the simplest form of the social expression of a child, is, therefore, a great, perhaps the greatest, of all educational resources.2
The child's impulse to do, to make— the constructive impulse —finds expression first in play, in rhythmic movement, in ges- ture, and make-believe; then becomes more definite and seeks outlet in shaping raw materials into tangible form and perma- nent embodiment. As these self-initiated social and construc- tive efforts of the child, aided by skilful direction from with- out, are shaped to his own definitely imaged and desired ends,
2 All the expressive arts, modeling, painting, drawing, etc., might be included either under this heading or that of the constructive impulse. Mr. Dewey suggests that the impulse to this kind of expression probably originates in both the social and constructive impulses of the child, that they are in reality refinements of them. For purposes of convenience, however, these expressions are grouped under a separate heading of artistic activities.
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 41
they result in helpful contributions to the common work and play. The very sense of having helped out turns back into and enhances the child's estimate of his own power. He finds for himself a consummate value in such a realization and is stimu- lated to further and better efforts. Little by little, a construc- tive way of acting becomes habitual and results in a developing experience for the child and for the group, an experience which is continually refined and enriched as it enlarges day by day.
The impulse to investigate and experiment is often a com- bination of the constructive and the conversational impulses. Hence, in the school, there was no distinction made between the experimental science for the little children and the work done in the carpentry shop'. They liked best of all to do things just to see what would happen. The teacher's part was to con- trive that one result should lead through one meaning to an- other, to ever more meaningful results.
The expressive impulse, like the investigative, seems to fol- low the communicating and constructive impulses; it is their refinement and full manifestation. All the utensils and ma- terials necessary to express ideas were, therefore, at hand when the desire to do so sprang out of the children's activities.
EXPERIMENTAL USE OF NATIVE IMPULSES (FIRST TWO YEARS)
These fourfold desires— to communicate, to construct, to in- quire, and to express in finer form— are the child's natural springs for action. His growth depends upon their use and exercise. The story of the developing curriculum is seen, there- fore, to be the story of the attempts to meet and utilize these deep-lying urges to expression and creative effort.
At the start, there was no previous school experience which had attempted to meet the psychological conditions of learn- ing implied in the concept of the organic circuit. Only a few theoretical principles had been formulated by Mr. Dewey which were privately printed during the fall of 1895. Nor were there any precedents as to a plan for school organization. The experience of the first six months, therefore, was largely re-
4s> THE DEWEY SCHOOL
vealing of what not to do. Aims, plans, and methods were, ac- cordingly, reconsidered, at its close, and on the basis of its suc- cesses and particularly of its failures, many revisions were made in the school's curriculum, its organization, and administra- tion. The school's original purpose still held, namely, to give each child the opportunity and method for doing those things he really wanted to do and such guidance in the process that his concept of their social meaning continually developed.
TYPE OF TEACHER
With the growing realization that the developing program of the school was a program of related activities, the concep- tion of the requirements of the teacher in charge of these ac- tivities, her abilities, natural aptitudes, and training, likewise took on a different aspect. The need of specialists whose back- grounds and training had fitted them for teaching certain sub- jects became apparent. Accordingly, from the beginning, in the building of such a staff, a specialist in science was included as a member of the teaching force.
ORGANIZATION OF CURRICULUM THROUGH ACTIVITIES
The addition of elementary nature study or science, of litera- ture and history, to the three R's of the old curriculum, to- gether with the multiplication of the means of expression (the so-called special studies, music, drawing, coloring, modeling) has disturbed the unity and balance of traditional primary edu- cation in many school systems. The result has been a confused and distracted child. To any one in intimate contact with young children, the glaring lack of continuity in most school programs, even in many of the better progressive types, seems quite beyond belief. The continuity that the word growth implies seems something apart from many teachers' conception of the nature of school activity. In many advanced private as well as public schools the young child's day is still compart- mented into tiny cubicles of time without sufficient care for either social or intellectual relations. The pressing problem
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 43
then, even as now, became how to utilize all these subjects and means of expression in an educative way, how to organize them about a common center, give them a thread of continuity, and make each reinforce the others.
A common center was found for the Laboratory School in the idea of the school-house as a home in which the activities of social or community life were carried on. The ideal was so to use and guide the child's interest in his home, his natural environment, and in himself that he should gain social and scientifically sound notions of the functions of persons in the home; of plant and animal, including human life, and their interdependence; of the sun as the source of all energy; of heat as a special form of energy used in the home (as in cook- ing); and of food as stored energy. The materials about him and the things that were being done to and with them fur- nished the ideas for the initial start and choice of the activities which occupied the children in the shop, laboratory, kitchen, and studios. These ideas were chosen for study not alone be- cause of their direct, clear, and explicit relationship to the child's own present environment and experience, but also be- cause of their indirect, veiled, and implied relationship to the past out of which present conditions have developed and to the future which is dependent upon the present. They started the child in his present, interested him to relive the past, and in due time carried him on to future possibilities and achieve- ments in an ever developing experience. In brief, they fur- nished a thread of continuity because they were concerned with the fundamental requisites of living.
From the teacher's standpoint, the development of these ideas afforded occasions and opportunities for the enrichment and extension of the child's experience in connection with his activities. The reconstructed story of the building of the homes of the primitive peoples, as the youngest group imagined and reenacted it, took on a character as real in historical quality as the authentic accounts of the homes of the ancient Greeks— the history learned by older groups. New words and short sentences, both read and written, added themselves easily to the vocabularies of the youngest children, while literature
44 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
embodying beauty of the written word was given to them in myth and story that had to do with the activities they were carrying on. From the teacher's point of view, the child was learning art as he drew, daubed, or modeled the idea that urged him to expression. He, however, unconscious that he was learn- ing anything, expressed in line or color, clay, wood, or softer fabric, the thing that in him lay and in so doing, no matter how crude the result, tasted of those deep satisfactions that attend all creative effort. Little did the experimenting child realize that he was studying physics as he boiled down his cane or maple syrup, watched the crystallization process, the effects of heat on water, and of both on the various grains used for food. He reinvented Ab's trap for the sabre-toothed tiger, quite oblivious that he was rediscovering the use of a certain kind of lever. The teacher knew, although he did not, that he was studying the chemistry of combustion as he figured out why fire burned, or weighed, burned, and weighed again the ashes from the different woods or coal and compared results. The coal in the bins in the cellar was traced to the mines and the fossil plants. The coal beds were located as were all the prod- ucts used in the activities. From the teacher's standpoint, this was geology and geography, or biology as the children ex- amined the seeds, their distribution, and use as food, or the life of the birds and animals in the open fields. From the child's standpoint, however, these ideas were interesting facts or skills that he learned as he went about his various occupations; they were reflected, as it were, in the series of activities through which he passed in becoming conscious of the basis of social life.
In their constructive work the younger groups made their own jute-board pencil boxes, their book covers, and other arti- cles needed in the school life. They selected the material for, measured, cut, and basted the dish towels for their laboratory kitchen. As they relived imaginatively the life and occupations of primitive man and reconstructed his environment and needs, they built into sand or clay or stone their ideas of the types of shelter used at this stage of life. They rediscovered the best kind of stone for making the weapons that he needed for pro-
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 45
tection from the wild animals or the best kind of clay for many uses in the way of utensils. As a by-product, they learned many geological facts, the source of the clay from the silt of rivers, the different kinds of stone, and the reasons for their dif- ferences.
In the laboratory, the child experimenter boiled water, col- lected steam, tried to "keep it in," and discovered its power as well as its heat. Under the same careful guidance, he planted corn in cotton and in soil; he kept it in the dark or in the light, in air and in a vacuum, weighing or measuring before and after, and learning what changes, if any, had been brought about by the growing plants. In the kitchen, also a laboratory, he husked, shelled, pounded, ground (for this he had made a mill in the shop), parched, soaked, and cooked corn which he had obtained from an interested farmer, when on a visit to his farm. The weighing and measuring were on scales, in meas- ures, or with thermometers made by the children themselves. For the simple reason that they could not weigh or measure and thus carry on something which claimed both their interest and effort without knowledge of and skill in the use of the symbols of weight and measurement, they learned the value of numbers, quite unaware that they were studying mathematics. Pints and pounds, halves, quarters, thirds became familiar de- vices to attain desired ends. The study of social life furnished the thread of continuity, linking all these modes of experi- ence—whether constructive or experimental. It had a direct aspect as revealed in the physical and social environment of the present or an indirect as in history and literature.
The following is a necessarily brief sketch of the school's first two years of rapid growth and experimentation. There were many trials of different types of subject-matter with dif- ferent groups of children which were discarded as not suitable either because of the character and training of the teacher, and the background of the children, or because the materials and equipment necessary were not available. With the younger groups, the meaning of the home was developed in detail. When very young, the child was led to consciousness that it was the center and source of all things necessary to his well-
46 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
being. In it he found food, shelter, and comfort, all of which came through the agency of various persons— his mother, his fa- ther, the milkman, the grocery boy, and others.
He learned that he and his home were dependent upon life without, particularly the life of the farm. A model farm was built in a large sand pan, and the study extended itself to what constitutes a typical farm locality— the kind of land for pasture, for meadow, or for the grain fields. The process was, of neces- sity, one of constant sharing by all. The practical methods of communication, the use of language, of reading, of writing, of measuring, took on importance in the eyes of the children and were thus naturally included in their daily program. The seasonal changes as exhibited in the relation of sun and earth, the vegetables and animal life, and the occupations of human life were, of course, constantly emphasized.3
The plan of the year's work was to make the study of social life the center of attention and to follow its development, in part at least, from its earliest beginnings through the barbaric stage to the opening of authentic history. Starting with the most primitive ways of living, it took up the beginnings and growth of industry through discovery and invention and their effect on social life.
The finding of metals was developed differently each year. Each group discovered the various ores, worked out in their own way their smelting process and the way in which such discoveries reacted upon the lives of those concerned. Usually the discovery of iron was taken up in great detail. Much dis- cussion disclosed the many uses for this metal and the fact of its frequent occurrence in many localities. The construction of miniature smelting places introduced the problems of air supply and fuel in small bulk and the difficulty of right appli- cation of heat. Other incidental problems were met and solved. The kindling point of different materials, which the children burned in small smelting places, was discovered. The latter were of necessity tiny kilns rather than the large pit smelting places of the early metal industry. As they worked, the chil-
« "School Record, Noles, and Plan XXI. The University of Chicago School," University Record, April 21, 1897.
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 47
dren thought out the effect this new industry would have upon the social life of people, as requiring a division of labor, and attempted to carry out such an organization in their own ef- forts to work together on a single smelting place, under the leadership of one person. Great emphasis was laid upon the development of the metal industry. It was a dramatic picture of the effect upon civilization of invention and discovery which resulted in control of the material which is basic to all other industries. The organization on the social side necessary for its production gave the children a picture of the beginnings of our industrial society.4 The subject of the governmental de- velopment, which had entered incidentally into previous dis- cussions, was now taken up as a subject by itself. The methods of transportation, necessitated by the beginning of commerce, and the barter of the new iron weapons, carried on by the more advanced tribes, were also discussed.5
In their study of social life, the older children of Groups V and VI (eight to ten years old) passed through the phases of primitive living more quickly than the younger groups and soon came to the period when man had settled into perma- nent homes. The life of the early Greek peoples was chosen as forming the easiest transition from the imagined records of primitive lives to the records of authentic history. Again there were no precedents to follow, and the question arose as to how to present history subject-matter to young children. What would be a good starting point? Again the guiding prin- ciple answered— it must be something closely related to their own life and therefore of interest to them. Experiment only could tell whether this interest lay in the manner of living, the social and political institutions, commerce, art, literature, religion, or thought. It was a serious problem to select from
4 Little time was given to the Bronze Age, as but a limited portion of mankind passed through this stage. This was found to be a mistake. The greater fusibility of copper and tin, together with the fact that they are found in a native state (thus making the processes simpler) would have made a more natural approach to the greater step of the discovery and use of iron.
s "Report of the University Elementary School," University Record, February n, 1898.
48 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
all the wealth of collected knowledge that which should prove of most value for the child.
A beginning was made with social life of the early Greeks. Their social groupings were studied and questions asked. How did these come to be, and what were the relations of these so- cial groups to each other? An attempt was made to trace the activities of the Greeks and to study their methods of war- fare, commerce, and political and domestic life. This led to a study of their fortifications, their weapons, and war chariots, their ships and methods of navigation, their forms of govern- ment, and governing officers, the making and execution of their laws, their homes, schools, farms, and cities. This study of institutions proved very interesting, but not entirely satis- factory. Full interest was lacking. The difficulty seemed to be that all these things persisted in remaining objective and far away from the children in spite of the fact that they had once had to do with the reality of living. The work was too abstract and detailed for this age of development, too formal and too remote from present personal interest. The dynamic quality was lacking, that which made life moving and vital. It did not furnish images enough. What was to be done?
Again, the recent past experience seems to have been scru- tinized for a suggestion of the next best step. These children were already thoroughly familiar with the myths of Greece so these did not seem to demand further attention. The line of approach lay somewhere between the myth-tale and such a study of Greek life as already had been attempted. This was finally found in what might be called a study of Greek char- acters. The myth and the organization of a Greek home were left almost wholly out of account, and a study was made of the great men of Greece, for in their deeds, shared by the whole nation, the common life of Greece found its best and most complete expression.
Interest in individuals is strong in children of this age. It is the period when they revel most in their own newly discovered individuality. Early peoples have the same experience. Their history is the history of heroes, and it is not less history be- cause it takes the form of biography in which the emotional
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 49
life of a whole people is expressed, so clearly and concisely that it is readily grasped by the child.
The children gleaned much of the material for this study themselves, did almost all of their own reading, and repro- duced on paper many of the tales of the Iliad, the Odyssey, Herodotus, and Plutarch. The events and persons involved were never to them mere historical happenings of a long time ago or characters who were dead and gone. They were living men and women anxious to do certain things to and with other men and women. As the study progressed, there was a gradual passage from the concern of a single hero to those -of a people who desire a common end and, therefore, act co- operatively. The gradual growth of people led by inspired in- dividuals to the common aims and united efforts of a corporate group is richly illustrated by Greek development and formed a basis of transition to the story of the organization and ad- ministration of the corporate life of the Roman people.
A study of the social life of the Romans had already been attempted with a younger Group (ten years), but here again experience proved the children were too immature to ap- preciate enough of the definite contribution made by this civilization to make the study worth their while. On the back- ground, however, of their study of the development of the Greek community life, it was hoped that these older children might become familiar with the trend of historical events and gain pictures of the social life of the times and the political evolution of a state. On the whole, however, this second ex- periment also was not wholly a success and did not warrant another trial with children of this age. The study of the Roman state was finally developed more satisfactorily in the later years with older children.6
For all groups during these two years the science work was a study of the plant as something which does work.7 Attention was first directed accordingly to the active functions, such as
e Group IX (thirteen to fourteen years), Teacher, E. C. Moore, Uni- versity Record, December 16, 1898.
7 Course outlined by John M. Coulter, and under direction of Katherine Andrews.
5o THE DEWEY SCHOOL
breathing and circulation, and the analysis of structure was made simply to locate the parts which do the work. The younger children, as compared with the older, showed a much keener interest in this observational work and preferred it to the experimental. Their drawings and records evidenced more freedom and less formality in their habits of noticing and re- cording. The older children studied the adaptation of plants to their environment. This included the different species found in different soils, and at different elevations, and brought out the relation of moisture to plant growth. A vacant lot was selected; the character of the soil in the high and in the low places was studied; and the different plants native to each environment and their groupings were noted.
With children of nine and ten years, the science included also a study of electricity as they saw it in everyday use.8 The electric battery or cell was used as a starting point, and the climax of their first investigations in this field was the installa- tion of an electric bell in the school-room. Simple experiments led as steps up to the understanding of the electric bell and later of the telegraph and telephone.
The work in cooking with the older groups was also largely experimental in character. The making of jelly from cran- berries and apples gave occasion for emphasizing or introduc- ing many physical processes, such as the effect of boiling water in disintegrating solid matter and in hastening the process of evaporation. These were demonstrated by experiment. The change of water into steam and back again into water, through the condensation process, was noted and voluntarily related to observation of the same process elsewhere. The effect of heat and cold upon the density of the material was brought out when the class saw that the hot liquid strained mucli more •easily than the cold, and that the juice grew solid much faster when placed out of doors. A number of children began at this time to relate processes noted in cooking to similar proc*
s The time spent was three to four hours weekly for ten weeks. The children worked individually, the discussion and a few of the more com- plicated experiments being conducted by the group as a whole. Course was first given by Katherine Camp.
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 51
esses in nature. The resemblance of thick boiling liquids to geysers and volcanoes was noticed, and generalizations were made about the expansive tendency of heat and the fact that steam demands more space than the water from which it was formed.
The custom of a weekly luncheon worked well for the older groups also in expressing and developing a social spirit. The work of getting lunch was variously distributed among the different children. Some calculated and measured the amount of cocoa needed, others measured and weighed hominy and water. Others set the table, while two wrote stories to read for the entertainment of the others. On a special oc- casion the ten-year-old group prepared a luncheon for twenty- two people. The meal consisted of bean soup and cocoa, and the children themselves bought the milk, bread, and butter needed. In the meantime, some of Group IV (nine years) set the tables and some wrote stories to be read at table for the entertainment of Group V (ten years). Among these stories were Robin Hood, Sun and the North Wind, Puss in Boots, Apollo and the Python, and others on original themes.
Opportunity was constantly given for expression in various mediums. By means of crayon, pencil, color, and scissors, as well as through the spoken and written word, the children were encouraged to record the memories of a walk, the apples they had gathered, the story they had heard, or the process they had imagined or carried through. One of these younger groups attempted graphically to represent the evolution of the house, from the earth lodge and cave to the Greek temple. The time given to the constructive work in shop, to the de- velopment of design and the decorative arts in laboratory or studio, to the writing of records, the related number work, or the reading and language drill in both English and French was so interwoven and incidental to the activities carried on in the study of social life, scientific observations, and experi- ments as to make it impossible to differentiate or calculate at all the amount given to each of these subjects.
The physical health of the children was constantly con- sidered. Until the spring of 1897, the work of this department
5s> THE DEWEY SCHOOL
was carried on at the University. Later, a large hall in the school was equipped and used for plays and games of the younger children, the rhythmic drills with wands and dumb- bells, and the apparatus work or basket ball of the older groups. There was constant supervision of individual children and their special needs.
In addition to its relation to the grace and rhythm of bodily movement music was also always included as a course of study for all groups. This study was in accord with the methods of Calvin B. Cady. Its purpose was to develop the musical in- telligence of the pupils by aiding them to form and express complete mental images of music. Music is idea expressed in tone, and a simple melodic phrase is intellectually and musi- cally a complete idea which must be grasped and gradually unfolded by the child into its essential elements o£ melody, rhythm and harmony.
This curriculum pertains to the School from 1896 to 1898 and represents what has been referred to as the "early period of the developing curriculum." In this experimental school, the concern was to discover not alone what subject-matter suited each stage of developing child life, but also to see what could be done with materials and activities never before used in classes of small children. The use of these spontaneous ac- tivities in the classroom necessitated great freedom for change, for omission, or for repetition later found necessary. As a result, the school program was always more or less tentative in character, and shifts in it were frequently made. Certain subjects were found excellent lor use at this or that age or with this or that group or teacher. Others proved unsuitable. There was a continual change and revision of both subject- matter and method on the basis of experience and in accord with the tastes and training of the teacher and the resources of the environment and equipment.
STAGES IN CHILD GROWTH
The practical experience of the School so far had demon- strated that there were certain stages in child growth. These
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 53
were never sharply defined, but merged into and overlapped one another. Certain needs and abilities characteristic of these stages were recognized, and a beginning had been made in selecting activities and skills appropriate to those needs and abilities. Experiment had proven that those studies which had been of fundamental value to the child's expression had also enlarged his mental horizons and carried him on into deeper living. As the result of such a critical interpretation of the practices of the School from the point of view of both the teacher and the learner, a clearly defined principle of mental growth emerged which was of primary importance in under- standing the needs of the growing child and in planning a program which should answer to those needs.
The statement made by Mr. Dewey of this principle of the psychological order of development is the basis of the subse- quent organization and administration of the School, both as to the more permanent groupings of the children and the choice of its subject-matter and method.9
In the organization of the Elementary School, three stages or periods are recognized. These, however, pass into one another so gradually that the children are not made conscious of the changes. The first extends from the age of four to eight or eight and a half years. In this period the connection of the school life with that of the home and neighborhood is, of course, especially intimate. The children are largely occupied with direct social and outgoing modes of action/ with doing and telling. There is relatively little attempt made at intellectual formulation, conscious reflection, or command of technical methods. As, however, there is continual growth in the complexity of work and in the responsibilities which the children are capable of assuming, distinct problems gradually emerge in such a way that the mastery of special methods is necessary.
Hence in the second period (from eight to ten), emphasis is put upon securing ability to read, write, handle, number, etc., not in themselves, but as necessary helps and adjuncts in relation to the more direct modes of experience. Also in the various forms of hand- work and of science, more and more conscious attention is paid to the proper ways of doing things, methods of reaching results, as distinct from the simple doing itself. This is the special period for securing knowledge of the rules and technique of work.
9 "The University Elementary School, General Outline of Scheme of Work," University Record, December 30, 1898.
54 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
In the third period, lasting until the thirteenth year, the skill thus acquired is utilized in application to definite problems of investiga- tion and reflection, leading on to recognition of the significance and necessity of generalizations. When this latter point is reached, the period of distinctly secondary education may be said to have begun. This third period is also that of the distinctive differentiation of the various lines of work, history and science, the various forms of science, etc. from one another. So far as the methods and tools em- ployed in each have been mastered, so far is the child able to take up the pursuit each by itself, making it, in some sense, really a study. If the first period has given the child a common and varied back- ground, if the second has introduced him to control of reading, writing, numbering, manipulating materials, etc., as instruments of inquiry, he is now ready in the third for a certain amount of speciali- zation without danger of isolation or artificiality.
The picture of the first two years of this experiment in edu- cation is somewhat blurred, for it was a period of quest, a try- ing out first of this trail, then of that. Many of these trails were blind; failure was as frequent as success; but out of the seeming confusion grew a skeleton pattern for the courses and method of the later years. Out of it also came a clearer under- standing of the child mind, its functioning, its changing powers and interests. Out of it grew a clearer picture of education as beginning, continuing and ending with life—a unified and rhythmic experience out of which is born and nourished day by day the individual life of the spirit which is die child, the person.
Subsequent experience revised the early statement of the psychological order of development after the eleventh year. The School's experience with the third stage of growth and the beginnings of the secondary period was not long enough to warrant much positive information after the thirteenth year.10 The growth stages are covered by the chapters in this volume as follows:
10 The age of the children in any group may be found by adding three to the number of the group, for example: Group I—age 4 years; Group II— age 5 years, etc.
PRACTICES DEVELOPING CURRICULUM 55
THE FIRST STAGE OF GROWTH
Chapter IV.— Groups I and II (4-5 years)
Chapter V.— Group III (6 years)
TRANSITION STAGE
Chapter VI.— Group IV (7 years)
Chapter VII.— Group V (8 years)
SECOND STAGE OF GROWTH
Chapter VIII.— Group VI (9 years)
Chapter IX.— Group VII (10 years)
TRANSITION STAGE
Chapter X.— Group VIII (11 years)
Chapter XI,— Group IX (12 years)
THIRD STAGE OF GROWTH AND BEGINNING OF SECONDARY PERIOD
Chapter XII.— Group X (13 years)
Chapter XIII.— Group XI (*4-i5 years)
CHAPTER IV
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS
GROUPS i AND ii (AGES FOUR AND FIVE)
IE setting for the youngest children of the school was not ideal from the point of view of convenience, modern equip- ment, or exposure. It was, however, sufficiently like the chil- dren's own homes to give a sense of familiarity to their first away-from-home experience. The home of the school, a large dwelling-house on Ellis Avenue, faced east. It had a wide angled, covered porch, but the large living-room, most suitable for a kindergarten room in other respects, lay on the northern side of the house. This very fact was turned to an advantage for it made the teacher more alert to the need of many out- door excursions for play on the porch or in the yard, trips to the park and its great gardens, to the Museum, or just on walks that were filled with talk of the children's own observa- tions. The room had great eastern windows and a fireplace. Owing to lack of funds, it was rather sparsely furnished aside from the tables and chairs necessary for work and the daily luncheon. The very bareness of the room, however, seemed to please the children, for it gave them the freedom for their plays and games often lacking in their home environment. At its rear was the old library of the house. Some of the shelves in this large room were kept for the school reference books; others were adapted for extra locker space for the little chil- dren. By happy chance, therefore, the dressing and undressing, the taking off and putting on of overshoes, and all the daily activities incident to the coming in and going out of little children, so important to their gradual development of con- trol and independence, were carried on in their own quarters.
56
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 57
Such were the quarters of the sub-primary department that opened for the first time in the fall of 1898 with eight children. In January of the next year, the number grew to twenty. The children were divided into two groups, the four-year-olds, Group I, and the five-year-olds, Group II. The number of boys and of girls was about equal. Daily attendance in each group averaged about nine. Later the enrolment of the sub-primary department was increased to twenty-four in order to bring the average attendance to ten or eleven. These children were not exceptional save as they represented to an unusual degree parents of various professions whose confidence in the plan and its sponsors had aroused a hope and a desire for this dif- ferent and more social type of training for their children. The daily program was as follows:
9:00- 9:30 Hand-work,
9:00—10:00. . . .Songs and stories.
10:00-10:30 Marching and games such as "Follow
the Leader" while the room was being aired and personal wants cared for.
10:40-11:15 Luncheon.
11:15-11:45 Dramatic play and rhythms.
This order was not a fixed one. It varied with the work the children were doing. Sometimes an outdoor excursion to places near-by was taken. The aim was to have a period of relaxation follow a period of fixed interest, so as not to keep them at one kind of work too long. The periods of hand- work included constructive work, play with blocks, drawing, painting, modeling in clay, work in the sand, or any suitable medium of expression.
Mid-morning luncheon was served every day. The children took entire charge of setting the table, serving, waiting upon each other, and of washing and putting away the dishes. The menu consisted of one tablespoon apiece of a prepared cereal, served with cream and sugar, a cracker and a small glass of milk, or cocoa on cold days. This menu served twenty- four children and three teachers for $5.00 a month. Fruit was served to children whose parents found the above menu ob- jectionable.
58 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
TEACHERS' PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPLES
The first year the teacher in charge,1 who had previously taught the primary department of a public school, also di- rected the reading and writing of some of the older groups. A year later she married, and a graduate of the Free Kinder- garten Association of Armour Institute took over the direction of the groups with the help of two assistants.2 These teachers in charge of this new sub-primary department had their own problems. In the light of a new but partial understanding of the little child as a growing person, both courage and faith were needed. They had need of courage to discard whatever they had learned of old methods and materials that could not be adapted to the sort of teaching disclosed by a new under- standing of mind in the making. They had need of faith to trust for guidance to the child's own selective power in and instinctive control of the activities induced by his surround- ings. The watchword was "continuity," in order to avoid breaks in the child's experience which would retard, hamper, or frustrate the spontaneous expression of his intellectual life— his thought in action.
The small child of four, who with others, faced the teacher of these youngest groups, feels himself a person, like other children of his age. He has long since passed out of the short period when instinct and simple emotion have control. The tentative beginnings of his intellectual life are well established. He has ridden rough shod over the indulgence and correction of his home guardian, has chosen what he liked, and rejected what he disliked; he has seen the way he would go and the thing he would do, and has both gone that way and done that thing. The consequent pleasurable experience of these first choices, these breaks away from his mother's plan and of following his own will-o'-the-wisp desires, have given him a new sense of freedom and of the power for independent action.
1 Florence La Victoire.
2 Georgia Scates, Grace Dolling, Jessie Taylor, pupils of Anna Bryan, head of Free Kindergarten Association of Armour Institute, who took an active interest in developing the sub-primary curriculum.
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 59
He has tasted the apple of life and found it to his liking. He has, to some extent, achieved his own intellectual ends, such as they are, and has formed his own habit of judging for him- self.3 "He has a method of thinking, as inevitably his own as was that of his mother or that of any other caretaker who made him see his own way by compelling him to react against her way." The teacher's problem was to simplify and clarify this passing out from the small center of the narrow and intense life of the family, where instinct and emotions have been the guides to action, into the larger and more diffused activities, which demand intellectual control. How could she make their present living a continuation of the old, so that it would con- tinually lead on to a new and larger experience?
As play is the child's natural avenue for expression, a teacher must consider his knowledge of the physical and social world about him with its materials and relationships. Play is neither purely psychical, nor purely physical, but involves the expres- sion of imagery through movement, with a social end in view. It is not to be identified with anything which he externally does. It rather designates his mental attitude as a whole. His sensations of color, sound, taste, or touch all function in order to carry on, assist, or reinforce this play, and his mind naturally selects material with reference to its maintenance and con- tinuation.4 "Play is the free movement, the interplay, of all the child's powers, thoughts, and physical movements, em- bodying in a satisfying form his own images and interests. At this age, he is still so unskilled in action that he practically lives in a world of imaginative play which comes through the cluster of suggestions, reminiscences, and anticipations that gather about the things he uses. The more natural and straight- forward these are, the more definite basis there is for calling up and holding together all the allied suggestions which his imaginative play really represents. The simple cooking, dish- washing, dusting, etc., which the children do are no more
s Alice C. Dewey, "The Place of the Kindergarten," The Elementary School Teacher, January, 1902.
* John Dewey, "Froebel's Educational Principles," The Elementary School Record, June, 1900.
60 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
prosaic or utilitarian to them than would be, say, the game of the Five Knights. To children, these occupations of every- day life are surcharged with a sense of the mysterious values that attach to whatever their elders are concerned with. The materials, then, must be real, as direct and straightforward, as opportunity permits. The house life in its setting of house, furniture, and utensils,, together with the occupations there carried on, offers material which is in a direct and real rela- tionship to the child, and which he naturally tends to repro- duce in imaginative form."
The program was relatively unambitious compared with that of many kindergartens, but it may be questioned whether there are not certain positive advantages to be seen in this limitation to activities that are so fundamental to human liv- ing that they continually lead out into new fields and open up new paths for exploration. Each activity, because of its in- timate relation to the needs of life, calls for expansion and enlargement, creates a demand for further activity, reveals a further need, and suggests something to satisfy that need, brings in new controls, new materials, and more refined modes of activity. The little child's liking for novelty and variety, his need of renewed stimulus, are satisfied and supplied with no sacrifice of the unity of his experience.
The life of the school touched civic and industrial life at many points. Many concerns were brought in, when desirable, without going beyond the unity of the main topic which helped to develop and foster in the child a sense of continuity and security, a feeling of at oneness with life which is at the basis of attention and fundamental to all intellectual growth. From the child's standpoint, this unity lay in the subject-matter—in the fact that he was always dealing with one thing— namely, home life. Emphasis was continually passing from one phase of this life to another; one occupation after another, one piece of furniture after another, one relation after another received attention. They all, however, contributed to one and the same mode of living, although bringing now this feature, now that into prominence. Upon the whole, constructive or "build-up" work (with of
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 61
course the proper alternation of story, song, and game con- nected so far as desirable with the ideas involved in the con- struction) seemed better fitted than anything else to secure two lectors— initiation in the child's own impulse, and termina- tion upon a higher plane. It brought the child into contact with a great variety of material such as wood, tin, leather, or yarn. It supplied a motive for using these materials in real ways, instead of going through exercises having no meaning save a remote symbolic one. It called into play alertness of the senses and acuteness of observation. It demanded dear-cut imagery of the ends to be accomplished and ingenuity and in- vention in planning. In addition, it made necessary concen- trated attention and personal responsibility in execution, while the results were in such tangible form that the child was led to judge his own work and improve his standards.5
It was taken for granted that the little child is highly imita- tive and open to suggestions, that his crude powers and im- mature consciousness need to be continually enriched and directed through right channels. It was understood that the psychological function of both suggestion and imitation is to reinforce and to help out, not to initiate. Both must serve as added stimuli to bring forth more adequately what the child is already blindly striving to do. It was accordingly adopted as a general principle that no activity should be originated by imitation. The start must come from the child through sug- gestion; help may then be supplied in order to assist him to realize more definitely what it is he wants. This help was not given in the form of a model to copy in action, but through the medium of suggestions to improve and express what he was doing. The same principles applied even more strongly to
s It is a pleasure again to acknowledge our great indebtedness to Miss Anna Bryan and her able staff of the Free Kindergarten Association, for numberless suggestions regarding both materials and objects for con- structive -work. Our obligations are also due to Miss La Victoire who inaugurated the sub-primary program in this school, and who, coming to the kindergarten the previous year from successful primary work, was highly effective in affiliating the kindergarten to the spirit of the best modern primary work. In later years Miss Georgia Scates, Miss Dolling, and Miss Elsie Port as well as others trained by Miss Bryan, all aided in developing the sub-primary program of the school.
62 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
what is called dictation work. Nothing, however, seemed more absurd than to suppose that there was no middle term between leaving a child to his own unguided fancies and likes and con- trolling his activities by a formal succession of dictated direc- tions. Neither was it thought that the teacher should not suggest anything to the child until he has consciously expressed a want in that direction. On the contrary, it was believed that a sympathetic teacher is quite likely to know more clearly than the child himself what his own instincts are and mean. Such a teacher can discriminate between use of imitation and sug- gestion so external and unreal to the child as to be thoroughly non-psychological, and use so justified through organic rela- tion to the child's own activities as to fit in naturally and in- evitably as instruments to help a child carry out his own wishes and ideals. In organic relations, images, in process of expres- sion, are compelled to extend and relate themselves to other images, in order to secure proper expression. This expansion or growth of imagery is the medium of realization and is se- cured when the materials of expression are provided and the end to which these are the means, is recognized by the child.6 Mr. Dewey points out in this connection that the process of learning, under such conditions, conforms to psychological conditions, in so far as it is indirect. Attention is not upon the idea of learning, but upon the accomplishing of a real and intrinsic purpose— the expression of an idea.
DAILY PROCEDURE
The first days in school were spent in getting acquainted.7 Each child finds out through talk and play with other children that they too have homes where many of the same familiar
«A teacher could supply the requisite stimuli and needed materials for expression. A suggestion of a playhouse that came from seeing objects that had already been made to furnish one or from seeing other children at work, was often quite sufficient definitely to direct the activities of a normal child of five.
7 Statements in regard to the children of four and five cover a period of five years, from 1898 to June 1903. All other statements that cover an experience with children of nine and ten, embrace a space of seven years.
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 63
things are done with this difference or that. The teacher finds that the children under her care will learn much from each other and sees in it both a help and a problem. Every one soon began to have a feeling that here was a place belonging to him, where simple ways were without haste and pressure. In his own home, adults, always engaged in their own pursuits, had hurried him in his play. Here, he found he could play as he wished and take his own time, as long as he did not block others' play. Here, also, he could express freely the natural social interest in other children normal to his age. In one group for example, the children grew acquainted with each •other and their surroundings by telling of their summer ex- periences. One little boy made an old-fashioned well like one on the farm he had visited, and another child made a basket with eggs like the one he had used. They soon were grouped or grouped themselves according to their favorite plays or games or way of expressing themselves, and these groups closely coincided with the actual ages of the children. The four-year- old children were satisfied with mere activity, regardless of means and ends. At first, this age preferred to play alone, but with skillful management the climbing, jumping, running, and rolling were guided into group games where the children learned to accommodate themselves to others and to express themselves in the presence of others.
SELECTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIVITIES
During the early weeks, both groups took many walks in the parks where their attention was directed to the homes of the birds, the insects, and the animals. They noticed the empty birds nests, brought some home, and talked of where the birds were going at this time of year and why. The gathered autumn leaves and drew them with paints or colored crayons. These expressions gave many clues to individual interests and talents. The repeated emphasis on home experiences loosened tongues, and the outside world came creeping in. Each child's own home life was used as a basis to build talks about the other children's homes and families, and the various persons helping
64 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
in the occupations of the household. The family's dependence upon the daily visit of the milkman, grocer, iceman, postman, and the occasional visits of the coalman and others was also discussed.
At this age, children are forthright into action, and an idea straightway becomes drama. At first little or nothing suffices for the setting of the stage. Any folded piece of paper is ade- quate for the postman's letter. The child's fertile imagination at first requires none of the props and aids of stage setting, properties, or costume. Very soon, however, his idea enlarges and is translated through action into the postman's cap, his bag, the mail box, or the two-wheeled mail cart of those clays drawn by a paper horse. Again the horizon shifts as new ideas rise over the border line of consciousness. The child wants to go further with the mail man than the corner post-box. The mail man takes letters from the box. "Where does he take them? To the post-office! Let's go." From the many avenues along which a little child can journey out into a larger world, the teacher must help to choose those trails that are not blind, but lead into main thoroughfares of thought and action.
In the autumn, when the activities of the world of both nature and man are inspired and influenced by the need of preparing for the cold days of winter, the thoughts of little children are easily directed to the seasonal changes and the necessary occupations which they cause. It was easy for the children in these groups to see the connection between the squirrel in the park, busy storing nuts in the hollow tree, and their mothers preserving fruit in their own kitchens.
But the child's many kinds of food, articles of clothing, and large and complicated house required many questions. Many of the answers to the latter seemed to open paths into one main avenue which led back to the farm. They made a trip to a farm and saw the orchards, the harvesting of the fruit, and the fields with their shocks of corn. This visit was the beginning of many activities, which varied, of course, with teacher, chil- dren, and circumstances. Part of the group played grocery store and sold fruit and sugar for the jelly-making of the others.
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 65
Some were clerks, some delivery boys, others mothers, and some made the grocery wagons. The clerks were given measuring cups with which to measure the sugar and cranberries and paper to wrap the packages to take home. This led under guidance into a discussion of the large storehouse. It was considered as a roomy place where a great deal of fruit could be kept. From time to time it supplied the grocery store which held only enough for a few days. A wholesale house was con- structed out of a big box. Elevators would be necessary, a child volunteered, for storehouses have so many floors; and these were made from long narrow corset boxes, a familiar wrapping in every household of that day.
Early cold days made it easy and natural for another group to decide that one of the necessary things for the mother to do was to get the warm clothing ready for the family. Out of this talk developed a play of the dry-goods store, in which three classes joined together. The children planned to play and decided the parts which grew in scope from day to day. Several children were the mothers coming to the dry-goods store to shop. Others were the clerks who arranged and decorated the windows with various materials. The mothers chose those they thought most suitable for warm clothing. All selected warm colors and judged of material largely by feeling it. A table was taken for a counter and on it were put scissors, thread, thimbles, and needles— all that would be needed for the making of clothing. After buying the material at the store, the mothers tried to match it in thread, in tape, and different kinds of silk. These attempts were interesting to watch. A third group of children made street cars out of chairs on which the mothers could ride to the store. One child was the conductor and punched the tickets, and a triangle was used for a car bell. Or again, two of the children became horse and wagon and de- livered the goods, while another child was the bundle wrapper. They enjoyed the game so much that it was played all over again the next day.
Still another group approached the occupations of the house- hold from a different angle. In the discussion (and aided by
66 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
suggestion) the children decided that mother has so much to do that she must have some one to assist in the general work of the house. They then organized and dramatized the work of washing and ironing, constructing the necessary utensils as they went along. The work for the two groups varied little save that the older children did more of their own construction. In making their scrub boards, for example, these children themselves measured the required lengths with rulers, and were also able to do their own sawing. Most of these children could count to fourteen and could understand the figures on the rulers.
It was found that the preparation for, the eating and clear- ing away of the mid-morning luncheon gave a continuous set of activities affording many opportunities for self-management and initiative in which the youngest child gradually came to competent control of the whole procedure. Each child must help in preparing for a group action. The counting of the chairs was a coveted task. Each chair was named for each child many times until the idea dawned that one can count the chil- dren and then count the chairs. This new method gradually extended to the counting of the spoons and other necessary articles, and a familiarity with the use of numbers in counting was gained. It was useful also to know that if you give one- half an apple to each child, four apples are enough for eight children, or if one cupful of flaked wheat is enough for two children, four cups must be used for eight.
Many operations difficult for small persons to surmount grew out of table setting. There were many materials to handle- chairs, cups, plates, spoons, napkins and food. They must learn with more and more success to carry properly, to place, to pour, to serve, and to wash and wipe the dishes. In all these processes, the thinking done and the decisions made involved coopera- tion in a project with a social end. The giving and receiving of directions required definiteness of speech and courtesy of manner in social relationships. To play host and hostess in- volved consideration of others, for equals in age and experi- ence as well as adults. Interest was always evident, and growth in development was shown by an increased sense of responsi-
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 67
bility.8 On great occasions, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, the menu for the luncheon was elaborated and extended to include the actual cooking of one food, such as cranberries or pop corn. When popping corn the children's apparent in- terest was not in why the corn popped, but in the kind of dish to use, how to hold it over the fire, and most of all in the popped corn, the ticklish process of its sharing and the delight- ful one of its consumption.
Toward the end of the second year, when getting the lunch, certain children, generally the older ones, began to ask why they couldn't always cook the cereal and to show an interest in the material of different dry cereals which they served. This interest in material and competency to plan and carry through alone the operations necessary for the mid-morning luncheon were some of the indications that a child was ready to under- take the more intricate processes of cooking, which, in this school, was a definitely developed subject-matter. Its scientific implications were easily emphasized with all ages, because of the natural social end of the luncheon. Five years of experi- ence resulted in the decision to postpone systematic use of cooking with heat to the six-year groups, when interest in experimentation as consciously planned and directed experi- ment begins to develop. With younger children, it was another case of skimming the cream from an activity which might be used to great advantage at a later period when desire to ex- periment with an end in view had awakened.9
The program for these groups was always flexible. It was adapted to the seasons and to special events such as Thanks- giving and Christmas. Birthdays were celebrated when one group entertained the other or an older group. At some sea-
8 The luncheon was generally prepared and cleared away in twenty minutes and in consequence, entailed on the part of the teacher just the kind of setting that would prevail in any well-ordered home where utensils and material were chosen and arranged for a young child's use.
a "Overestimation of the child's ability is drawing on the future. It puts in the child's way material for which he is not ripe and is sure to bring on that attitude of indifference which is characteristic of that unfortunate being known as the blase kindergarten child." Alice C. Dewey, "The Place of the Kindergarten in Education/' Elementary School Teacher, January, 1902.
68 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
son of tie year, usually the second quarter, the work included the building of a play house. This was a group enterprise. Cottages with one or two rooms, the smallest known to the children, were made of blocks. Day by day details were added. Streets were made with sidewalks to connect with other streets. Lamp-posts were added and the stepping stones across the streets. These ideas were the children's own and developed without direct suggestion. When interest flagged, they were aided (by prearrangement of material and situation) to carry on into a new phase of the idea. The streets and sidewalks of their toy town finished to their satisfaction, a hint was suffi- cient to direct attention and effort to the interior arrangements of their cottages. They outlined the rooms with six-inch blocks and with smaller ones placed in them the necessary furniture. Another group of children cut their houses from brown paper and drew the sidewalks.
As they worked there was talk of the wood that was used in the construction of real cottages. Speculation was rife as to where it came from and its many uses. Answers came easily— tables and chairs and the woodwork in the houses were sug- gested. Finally, one child volunteered that trees were made of wood also. Some one else then suggested that trees could be chopped down to get the wood. These details taken from the records serve to show how the self-originated ideas of the chil- dren were allowed to develop into self-expression and to extend and enlarge into larger and more complicated execution. Only enough aid was given to avoid "blocks" in expression and the consequent dulling of interest and waste of effort in a "slowed up" process.
An expedition to a hardware store to see what tools a car- penter might use to build a house made one child want to build his own house to take home. Large boxes were used. The older children measured and cut all the paper for the walls. The little children tacked down the matting on the floors, made a table for the dining-room by fastening legs on a block. For chairs, they nailed a back to a cube and tacked on a leather seat. The older children made tables and chairs from uncut wood, which they measured and sawed by themselves. When finished,
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 69
these were shellacked and the seats upholstered with leatherette and cotton. Some of the children painted the outside of die house so that its walls should "be protected from the weather." Inside it was papered "for ornament/' and the necessary furni- ture for each room decided upon, made from cardboard, wood, or tin, and put into place. One of the results of this phase of the project was a gain in each child's ability to carry out his own ideas. He was put to it to execute and to show individual results. He thus secured the feel of accomplishment according to the measure of his success.
All the hand-work of these groups involved the use of large muscles. That of Group II was a little more advanced than that of Group I. The latter, for example, were given two pieces of wood to make a chair— one, 4x1 inches, the other a i x i inch cube. Their problem was to find a way of putting them to- gether. Group II, however, was given a cube and a long strip of wood which they measured and sawed to length, before constructing the chair. A leather cushion for the chair was given to the younger children, cut the right size to fit the chair; while the older children were given a large piece from which to cut the cushion to their own measurements. This work was given slowly, a few steps at a time, not too closely con- nected, but in such a way that each step appealed to the child as a fairly complete whole in itself. Recognition also was given to the desire all children have— time to play with what they have made.
REPORT OF GROUP TEACHERS
At the end of each quarter, each group teacher reported on the work of the group. These reports were for the information of her colleagues and those directing the experiment; they enabled the writer to evaluate her series of activities and in the light of its success or failure, to plan her succeeding pro- gram. Extracts from such an evaluation of a quarter's activi- ties, in terms of the gain in development made by the children who engaged in them, may help to point out how necessary such reports were to the success of the entire experiment. These classroom findings became the basis of informal and seminar
70 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
discussion out of which came the revision that made for what- ever progress in education this experiment may have achieved.
10 Our chief aim has been to help each child in Group I to gain control of himself and the few simple materials at hand. In reality, this is the beginning of his mastery of the whole material world. The environment is new to each, likewise the social relations. It took some time to become accustomed to both in order to adjust to both. As a group, they have begun to recognize to some extent each other's rights and to feel a certain amount of responsibility for keeping the whole kindergarten in good condition. They have gained some control over their own bodies, especially their hands. This is proved by their ability to arrange materials, build with blocks, and to con- struct a few, simple objects of paper, tea-lead, or clay. In this work and play, they have used water-colors to express their ideas. The drawing so far can scarcely be called drawing; it is mostly an oc- casional test of the impressions the child has received and of the skill he is acquiring in the way of giving expression along these lines. The modeling in clay is beginning to assume a somewhat more definite shape, and the results are sometimes in accord with the names they bear. For the most part, there is still more pleasure in the mere handling of the material, and the name is discovered after the object is finished.
The work with Group II has been somewhat more definite so far as progress is concerned. The children have all gained considerable •skill in building with blocks and have a pretty good idea of the right position and relation of these blocks to produce the desired effect. Free play has been given and then directed when they have shown signs of finding their own limitations in the use of material. Some- times, each child does his separate piece of work in his own way; sometimes, each does his own as all of the rest do theirs; and some- times, all work together, each doing a part on some one thing. This latter plan is not altogether successful at the beginning, but the children later get much pleasure out of such cooperative work and play. The only models used for work in clay and color so far have been fruits and vegetables. These have been fairly well reproduced. The drawing has been interesting in its different stages, but progress is not marked. Much has been from imagination, with an occasional reproduction of experience such as their visit to the baker or the blacksmith shop. The games have grown from those which give pleasure through the mere exercising of the body to those which deal a little more with the imagination and the dramatization of actual experience. This has enlarged their ideas of social relations.
Each child begins to feel in a small way the pleasure that comes
10 Group Teachers, Bertha Dolling, Elsie Port.
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 71
with sharing, as he relates his experience in the morning circle or brings from home something in which all are interested. Sometimes this is a story or a song, a book or a pet toy; whatever it is, they are all learning in a sweet, unconscious way to give and have pleasure in giving. The more timid children are beginning to offer a remark or two, and this is encouraged as aften as possible. The spirit of helpfulness is often shown in the arranging of the chairs or dusting before kindergarten, in putting on their own wraps as far as possible, and in helping others who need it.
Some number work has been done with all of the children, more in the second group than in the first. In Group I, each child can count beads, children, blocks, or other objects up to six. With one or two when six is reached, there is uncertainty and indefiniteness. The finger will touch two or three beads while counting one, or will count four or five while touching two. With the larger number of children, however, sixteen and seventeen seem to be the limit. Two is about as large a number as they try to handle in combina- tions. They will make number lessons for themselves, studying two beads of one color, two of another, or perhaps two of one form and one of another. In Group II perhaps one or two of the children can count to fifty or one hundred, but the actual comprehension of number with the majority of the group stops with twenty or twenty- one.11 The group works with twos, threes and fours, and can make simple combinations of these numbers.
SUMMARY
A spirit of freedom and mutual respect on the part of both teachers and children was as apparent in these groups as in the older. Each child came to see that orderly self-direction in his activity was essential to group effort: he learned to stop pounding because it interfered with the group's story-telling, even though he didn't choose to join the activity of the group. The "good" way of doing things developed in each situation, and the best order of proceeding with the activity was formu- lated by teachers and children as a result of group thought. Therefore, "discipline," so-called, was not from above, but was evolved as a result of the participation by both teacher and children in a group activity, and a school spirit developed which fostered social sensitivity and conscience. The teacher's
11 This limit was probably due to the fact that the class numbered twenty-one.
72 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
part in the developing play of these years is to see that the child really carries out his self-initiated game in such a way that, without unnecessary aid from her, the play proceeds in orderly development to its finish. This aid takes the form of an in- telligent shared interest which when necessary removes "blocks" in the child's action so that it is free and unhampered to follow the gleam of his own impulses.12 The purpose was that the flow of dynamic energy from these native desires to do and to make should be used to attain that measure of skill in action which would enable him to accomplish his end without undue and discouraging effort. The satisfaction of this accomplishment would then carry over and give rise to the new gleam of a larger purpose. In order that this flow of power and purpose might be uninterrupted, it was necessary that the activities be continuous. Those of one day or week or period of develop- ment must grow out of the preceding and into the succeeding one, in order that the native powers and acquired skills of every child may be continuously stimulated and built into habits of acting whidi can cope with the changing conditions of his activity. This was an ideal in the school. Needless to say, there were often breaks in this desired continuity; subject- matter that did not carry the idea on nor the child's original impulse over into the next period of growth. Discussion as to reasons for this failure led to elimination or revision.
In the process of getting what he wanted, the child learned many things as to the ways and means of getting it. Little by little in this school of experiencing, he was taught control. His impulse to act grew less immediate. He schooled himself to wait, to think, and plan a bit before acting. Success and failure in dealing with means in regard to ends exercised his judgment of the quality and value of means as appropriate to purpose. When the conditions were right, and the let and hindrance were in the right proportion for the continuous development of his action, he gradually built up a background
12 These "blocks" occur often for reasons hidden in the child's past, sometimes because ot interference of unsocially developed children who get "a kick" out of interruption per se.
HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS 73
of both satisfactory and unsatisfactory experience, which gave him a basis for wider choice and more definite preference.
Ideally, then, he was well started in his growing process.
As a member of a group, he had learned the rudiments of co- operation, and something of the pleasure of sharing. He had experienced the satisfaction of doing and of making the con- crete image of his idea. The latter (ideally) self-originated, was accomplished largely through imitation and guided by sug- gestion. Little by little, however, he had been thrown on his own to choose his play or the material with which to develop his thought, and he was already beginning to investigate and experiment, to use "the test and prove" method. In the process he had learned, by succeeding and failing, the subsequent pleas- urable or disagreeable sensations, the satisfactory or unsatis- factory feelings. Thus, he built up a background of experience that had depth as well as range and quality as well as efficiency. His were the rewards of a construction that truly expressed his purpose, the pleasurable sensations of the sand swiftly dropping through the fingers, the softness of the easily molded clay, the bright color of the paints vividly reproducing the mental image, the melody of the songs, or the rhythm of the dances. All blended into a living and expressing that was truly artistic in its quality, however crude its product.
G,
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL OCCUPATIONS SERVING THE HOUSEHOLD
GROUP III (AGE SIX)
' ROUP III averaged about seventeen in number. Their headquarters were in one of the best rooms in the house, which also served as the biological laboratory. This room had an eastern and southern exposure, with a big bay-window, closet, and alcove. Here stood the vivarium and aquarium that pro- vided homes for the many living things— plant and animal- collected by the children.
In this room the children of Group III spent an average of one and a half to two hours a day. This time was used for social exchange of their ideas and plans and the dramatization of the occupations they were undertaking. A blackboard and a sand-table were available and free floor space for games. The group was divided for the work necessitating individual at- tention, but went as a whole to assembly and chorus singing. The entire group joined twice a week with the seven-year- olds in plays and games, outdoors and in the gymnasium. Two or three times a week, they returned to the sub-primary rooms for a half hour of play and music with the younger children.
Group III was in charge of a teacher trained in science. She was responsible for the physical condition of the children, and the parents came to her for consultation. She had an assistant.1 The school period for these children was from nine to twelve, a half-hour longer than that of the sub-primary groups. There was no mid-morning luncheon as their going about the school
i Katherine Andrews, Wynne Lackersteen.
74
OCCUPATIONS SERVING HOUSEHOLD 75
and participating in the cooking gave them the necessary op- portunities of a social nature. Seven years o£ experimentation with activities for this age resulted in a choice of present day occupations as the most suitable subject-matter. The general method of procedure was the same with all groups. Ten to fifteen minutes were always given at the opening of school to group conversation. What had been done was talked over and the reasons for success or failure were brought out; plans for the day were made; jobs were distributed. Each child served in turn as leader. The written program was pinned to him. This was for the guidance of adults in a case of a temporary change of rooms. The children usually carried the program well in mind, although there were interesting individual variations and ability to lead was often used as a test of maturity and judgment. At this age (six years), the characteristic attitude is still that of play. Therefore, the greater amount of time was given to active pursuits, only about two hours a week being devoted to things intellectual, the stories and conversations about the social activities of the group. The amount of con- crete number experience in connection with constructive work in the shop, cooking, and number games was unusual for chil- dren of this age. This frequent use of number symbols, com- bined with the gradual introduction of the symbols of measure- ment throughout this year and the next, was considered the explanation of these children's rather unusual understanding and later use of arithmetical relations and expressions.2
Many excursions kept the balance between the children's ob- servational attitude and their constructive expression, includ- ing music and all forms of art. They were encouraged to look in order to use; to return to actual situations and to pictures
2 A mother of one of the boys in this group recently wrote to the authors of this book: "The work done in the school by my boy in arithmetic, history, and English especially pleased me. Because they were taught arithmetic concretely, not abstractly, they were able to accomplish feats in mental arithmetic which to me were phenomenal. They added, subtracted, and multiplied fractions as easily as I did whole numbers. Their history was made a living thing to them, and the good literature which was read to them was suggestive to their mother, as well as very helpful in forming in them a taste for good literature."
76 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
for information. In other words, they were encouraged to re- search at a six-year-old level.
CHARACTER OF THE CHILD'S SOCIAL INTEREST
Beginning with blocks and floor games where social organiza- tion was necessary to carry work through, the children de- veloped an astonishing technique in the use of the sand-table and all sorts of materials for observed or imagined scenes. One objection to a restricted use of the sand-table was that such representation often became static. Hence recourse was often made to dramatic representation by the children themselves in outdoor meetings. For example, the sand-table was transferred, in the spring, to the side yard, and fields and gardens were laid out on a larger scale and with a greater sense of reality.
The study of present-day occupations, with its emphasis on those supplying the food necessities of life, led this group to spend much time in the study of food. In the kitchen-laboratory many opportunities occurred for the children to try things out for themselves, to handle and manipulate materials and com- bine them, and to see and criticize the results of their handi- work. At this age, they began also to go to the art studio, al- though the impromptu drawing and designing done in the group room were often still superintended there by the art teacher or her assistant. Two years of games and other activities had deepened and widened their knowledge of their immediate physical and social world. Each child recognized die similarity of his own to other homes, and in some measure, the de- pendence of all upon the larger world through the service of the many persons who brought letters, food, clothing, or other fundamental necessities for daily living. Interest had centered primarily in the individual who brought things, not in the things he brought. Always it was the person, what he did, how he did it, and what came of it that excited their curiosity. Peo- ple, and only incidentally their occupations, had been the sub- ject of his study, his conversation, and his play. Gradually, this interest in people had enlarged, and plays had extended to activities that took them out of the home and the immediate
OCCUPATIONS SERVING HOUSEHOLD 77
neighborhood. With this change, the interest -which earlier was primarily personal, centering largely in action and the feeling induced by action, passed over to an interest in the ob- jective results of action; from the milkman carrying the milk to the milk, where it comes from, and how it is made. Ideas are now best conveyed to the child by the story form, which is also his own favorite method of expression. The story at this period is the intellectual counterpart of the child's in- terest. It must have go, movement, the sense of use and opera- tion. It must be a physical whole, holding together a variety of persons, things, and incidents, through a common idea that enlists the feeling of the child. The latter is seeking "wholes," stories that are begun, continued and ended, that are varied through episode, enlivened with action, and defined in salient features. The study of corn, for example, as something he has seen growing, has himself husked, shelled, and perhaps ground is highly interesting and exciting to a child of six. Without this background of personal experience, a study of corn separated from the story of the farm and the farmers, the miller and the mill, becomes divested of the glory of its use, the part it plays in life and living.8
The material selected as the basis for this stage of growth, existing social occupations, was designed to meet and feed this attitude of this period of development. The typical occupations of society at large is a step removed from the child's egoistic, self-absorbed interest and yet deals with something personal, something which touches him, and which will therefore lure him on. Experience proved there are great advantages to be gained from a study of natural objects and processes placed in a human setting.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MATERIALS USED IN STUDY OF OCCUPATIONS
The study of occupations as carried on during the year in- volved observation of seeds and their growth, of plants, wood,
3 "Inspection of things separated from the idea by which they are car- ried, analysis of isolated detail of form and structure, neither appeals to nor satisfies a little child." John Dewey, "Introduction to the Work of Group III," The Elementary School Record, 1900.
78 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
oil, stones, and animals as to phases of structure and function of parts or habit of performance, of geographical conditions of landscape, climate, and arrangement of land and water. The pedagogical problem was to direct the child's power of obser- vation, to nurture his sympathetic interest in characteristic traits of the world in which he lives, to afford interpreting ma- terial for later, more special studies, and yet to supply a carry- ing medium for the variety of facts and ideas through the dominant, spontaneous emotions and thoughts of the child. No separation was made between the social side of the work, its concern with people's activities and their mutual depend- encies, and the scientific side, its regard for physical facts and forces. Such conscious distinction between man and nature is the result of later reflection and abstraction and is, therefore, far beyond the mental ability of this stage of growth. To force it, at this time, will not only fail to engage the child's whole mental energy, but will confuse and distract him. To make the child study earth, air, or water, bird, beast, or flower apart from environment and out of relation to their use by other factors in the environment, their function in the total life-process, cuts the tie that relates and binds natural facts and forces to people and their activities. The child's interest fades for he misses the way. His imagination finds no avenue of connection that makes object, fact, or process concrete to him. He loses his original open, free attitude to natural facts. Nature herself is reduced to a mass of meaningless details. In contrast, however, when a natural object is clothed with human significance and human association, a road lies open from the child's mind to the object through the connection of the latter with life itself. The unity of life, as it presents itself to the child, thus binds together and carries along the different occupations of living. The diversity of plants, animals, and geographical conditions; drawing, modeling, games, constructive work, numerical cal- culations, are ways of carrying certain features of it to a com- pleted mental and emotional satisfaction. It was found that such interaction of the various matters studied and of the powers that were acquired by the children avoided waste and maintained unity of mental growth. The problem of correla-
OCCUPATIONS SERVING HOUSEHOLD 79
tion, therefore, often solved through devices of instruction em- ployed to tie together things in themselves disconnected, was not present in this school because of the community and con- tinuity of its subject-matter.
In addition, the study of the often observed, well-known, everyday occupations of living satisfied two recognized de- mands and principles of primary education: (i) the need of the familiar, the already experienced, as a basis for moving upon the unknown and remote; (2) the important claim for the part which the child's imagination plays in the process. Each day the child had occasion and opportunity to get from and exchange with others his store of experience, his range of information. He needed continually to make new observations, correcting and extending them in order to keep his own images moving and find mental rest and satisfaction in definite and vivid realization of what is new and enriching.
DETAILS OF METHODS USED
Children in Group III (age six) were beginning their third year of school. The first week was usually full of talk about the experiences of the past summer. These were related by skilful direction and suggestion to the work of the previous year and the attention gradually focused on the extension of these in- terests to their present and future activities. The group went outdoors every day and noted the changes taking place in the woods, fields, and parks. Insects were found going into winter quarters, and many kinds of seeds were collected. The question of seed distribution came up, and the children thought of va- rious agents—the wind, people, and various sorts of animals. Talk and interest centered for some time on seeds, and excur- sions were taken to the park and the woods twenty blocks away, where several seeds that were good to eat were found. This suggested others also good for food, and finally, each child made a list of such seeds and with help, classified them as (i) those where the seed house was good to eat, (2) where the seed house was not good, (3) those fruits such as the tomato, the bean, and the cucumber where both the seed and seed
8o THE DEWEY SCHOOL
house were good for food. The next point developed was that certain seeds are cultivated for their food value by people who are called farmers. This took the children's thoughts into the country and back to their previous year's experience and the various farms they had visited. Some one suggested, "let's make a farm," and they were then started on a project similar to that of the previous years. There are, however, several points of difference worthy of notice. Although the same use of materials continued with these children, more definite forms of control were established. Desirable means were considered with rela- tion to desired ends. This is well illustrated by the way in which the seeds that are good for food, the cereals, were studied in cooking. The preparation and cooking of the cereals brought out their constituents. This led to an additional classification of foods with relation to their source, whether the seeds, the stalks, or the roots of plants.
The possibilities found in the gardening and indoor occu- pational work possible for this year increased so rapidly with the increased capacity of the child that the choice was almost unlimited. All the problems connected with plant growth recur in the care of plants and animals, but now definite experimen- tation, planned by the child, began. The storing up of food by the plants either in seeds, leaves, stems, or roots can be taken as a problem in itself and linked with the care of the school- room bulbs or garden seed. Another link made in the child's mind during this year was the dependence of animals (and human beings) upon plants and of plants upon the soil.4
GENERAL PROGRAM OF A TYPICAL GROUP
The general method of the classroom, for the most part, followed a certain daily order. At the beginning of the period, the children were given time for the exchange of the amenities of the day usual to a group of persons meeting after an ab- sence. This general conversation was soon directed by the
* While too much emphasis should not be placed upon the child's dawn- ing interest in discovering for himself appearing at this age, yet it can be utilized in finding new ways of getting old results.
OCCUPATIONS SERVING HOUSEHOLD 81
teacher to the business of the day. The results of previous work were reviewed in a group process, and plans for further devel- opment were discussed. Each child was encouraged to con- tribute, either out of his past experience or his imagination, ways and means of meeting the problem of needs that might arise under new circumstances. These suggestions were dis- cussed by the group, and with the aid of the teacher, the plans for the work of the day were decided upon and delegated. At the close of the period, there was again a group meeting when the results, if successful, were summarized, and new plans for further work at the next period suggested.
The first project of the year started off with the building of a farm-house and barn out of large blocks varying in size up to six inches. In order to find the dimensions of their square houses, the children added the lengths of the blocks on one side and found the sum to be twelve inches or one foot. A plan for a chicken coop of manilla paper was then discussed and was finally marked off in two- and three-inch lengths, a rough ap- proximation to keep in scale with the house. In the meantime, attention was centered on the farm itself, and the decision was made to raise corn and wheat and to have sheep and a dairy. The land was divided into fields and pastures, which were then fenced. For this they gathered twigs (to take the place of logs in making a rail fence), cut them into six-inch lengths, and built the fence three rails high. Around their pastures, how- ever, they decided to have a stone fence, as they thought this was stronger. Work continued to some extent on the farm- house. Boards were cut to proper lengths, with spaces for the door and windows. A chicken coop was started. In planning the back part of this, when laying off spaces for the windows and doors, it suddenly struck the children that the door was wider than it was high. One of the children went to another table and measured the door already laid off for the front of the farm-house, and came back with the correct dimensions. This was an encouraging indication of a developing power of initiative and judgment. The square, the triangle, and the ruler were used freely. Although they had used the latter only a short time, they were very apt in its use. They knew the inch
82 THE DEWEY SCHOOL
and half-inch, but hesitated on the quarter-inch. In general, it was found that they all took manual directions very well and showed great ability to plan and a high degree of independ- ence in the execution of their plans, doing all the measuring and sawing themselves. As the project developed they suggested many of the things necessary in the making of a suitable house. The interest was well-sustained. In the kindergarten these chil- dren had been accustomed to making things that could be finished in one day, but they worked on this for almost two weeks without any loss of interest.
Early in the fall the group measured off and cleaned a space in the school yard five by ten feet for planting their winter wheat. A method of plowing was discussed and at one child's suggestion, a sharp stick was used and the field prepared in which the wheat was sown. In their sand-box farm their imag- inary crop had come to fruition and, like the sheaf brought in from the farm, was ready for threshing. The various parts of the whole plant and their uses were discussed with the con- clusion that the seed was of most value to people. A list was made of the wheat foods they had eaten— breakfast foods of coarsely ground wheat, and bread and cake from the finely ground flour. They played that they were farmers and dis- cussed the best means of getting the seeds from the hulls, as they called the process of threshing. At first they picked it out by hand. This was too slow, so they suggested beating it with a stick and found that only the edge of the stick struck the ground. The problem was taken to the shop director, and with the help of some questioning, the children decided that if the farmer had two sticks joined together, more of the stick would hit the grain and thus the work would be done more quickly. The handle of the flail was made twice as long as the part that hits the grain. The next stop was to experiment with the wheat they had threshed and winnowed. Accordingly, it was pounded in a mortar and compared to some fine, white flour. They saw that the inside of the grain was soft and white like the fine flour, but that it was mixed with coarse, yellow par- ticles. A child suggested putting this meal through a sieve to separate the coarse from the fine. This was done, but although
OCCUPATIONS SERVING HOUSEHOLD 83
the meal was a good deal finer, some of the yellow particles still remained. They then wanted to put it through a still finer sieve, but as there was none convenient, the process of bolting was explained to them, and the flour was sifted through some cheese cloth. This took out all the yellow particles and left the flour fine and white. They had in the end about three tablespoonsful o£ it, which was used in making a cake.
The experimental work with the food products of the farm and the effect of heat upon them as demonstrated in the cook- ing bulked large in the daily activities of these children. The interest in this phase of their occupational work was keen and assumed great importance in the development of the whole project and particularly in their use of numbers. When they talked about grains in the classroom, they cooked cereals in the kitchen. For this they needed to learn to measure, to know how many teaspoons equal one tablespoon, how many table- spoons equal one cup, and so on. They discovered that two halves make a cupful, just the same as three thirds, or four quarters, and they came to talk about %, %, or % of a cupful, with ease and certainty. It was easy for them to see that % of a cup of water is i and % of a cup.
Much also of the number work was related to the construc- tion work done on their farm or in connection with it. When their sand-table farm had to be divided into several fields for wheat, corn, oats, and also for the house and the barn, the children used a one-foot ruler as a unit of measurement and came to understand what was meant by "fourths and halves"— the divisions made, though not accurate, were near enough to allow them to mark off their farm. As they became more fa- miliar with the ruler and learned the half -foot, and the quarter- foot and inch, finer work was naturally expected of them and obtained. Their use of this tool made it easy to distinguish those children who had had a kindergarten education from those who had just entered the group. When building the farm-house, four posts were needed for the corners and six or seven slats, all of the same height. In measuring the latter, the children frequently forgot to keep the left-hand edge of the ruler on the left-hand side of the slat, so the measurements had
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to be repeated two or three times before they were correct. What they did to one side of the house, they also did to the other and naturally worked more rapidly and more accurately as the work was repeated.
A new game of dominoes, invented by one of the teachers,5 did much to interest the children in the composition of num- bers. Each domino had lines in place of dots. These when joined make numbers. A child is asked to take eight blocks. At first, he takes one block at a time, eight times. He builds his eight and is asked what he sees in it. He may see four and four or five and three. When all the compositions of eight are exhausted, he is asked how he can take eight blocks more rapidly than just one at a time. He may say: "Take six in one hand and two in the other," or "four in one hand and four in the other," and then proceeds to demonstrate this, by building an eight with a six and two, a four and four, and so on. This was done with all numbers up to twenty. When they came to the number ten, a child was asked to count the fingers on both hands and when he answered ten, was told that he had counted "once around his fingers," and a symbol for that was "i (once) O round." The children agreed this might have been the development of our "10." Twenty was then twice (2) around and so on. In making eleven, twelve, and the "teens," they built their ten and began again to build another ten, but the blocks gave out (purposely). One of the blocks from each child's set was marked with a blue chalk line, and this marked block represented ten. So when they made eleven, twelve, etc., they made it with the ten block and one or two more. They were interested and understood quickly. The report com- ments "the children of these two groups seem to be mathema- tically inclined, and numbers are a pleasure to them."
An interest in reading also developed during these weeks, starting in a game which necessitated it. All the things they had found in their outdoor excursions were placed on a table. Sentences were written on the board, such as: "Find a cocoon," and the child who could read it was allowed to run and get the
s Clinton Osbora.
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cocoon. After playing this game a few times, the same sentences were shown printed in large type, so that they would get the printed form simultaneously with the script. They seemed very eagei to read and decided themselves to make a weekly record of their work. This record was printed from time to time in large type and was reread with undiminished interest. One of the children brought David Starr Jordan's The Story of Knight and Barbara to school. Knight and Barbara were chil- dren of three and six, who retold and illustrated the stories that had been told to them. The children were so pleased with the book that they thought they would like to make one like it and at once set to work on the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise as the first story for their book. The story was told to them and they retold about one half of it at one sitting. This took some time as considerable discussion was necessary to make their story logical and clear. The story was written on the board and, when completed, was printed in large type on the charts, and later in small type for their books. The group seems to have shown the same sustained interest in reading and in finishing these books that they did in the making of their farm and, in general, exhibited a rather remarkable abil- ity to concentrate on all phases of their work.
DETAILS OF EARLY DRAMATIC PLAY
Dramatic play frequently helped initiate a new phase of the activity and as frequently was the means of summarizing the result of a period's work. The distribution of the threshed or milled wheat started off with such a play. The setting for the play, the farm and the mill, was constructed of large blocks; some children played they were farmers; others were millers. The farmers carried wheat to the mill; the millers ground it. The farmer paid the miller by letting him keep some of the flour and carried home the rest for bread in sacks already pre- pared for this purpose by the children. Wagons were needed, and in a day or two these outnumbered their horses. Day by day the idea grew, helped on by timely hint or suggestion.
It was explained that times had changed, that now there was
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no small near-by mill where a farmer could take his grain. It must be sent many miles away to a large mill, which ground the wheat of many farms, and when each farmer wanted flour, he bought it at a grocery store in the nearest town. It took some time for them to get a clear idea of the modern trans- portation of wheat from the farm to the big mill and the dis- tribution of the flour from the mill. Here again, their first ideas were worked out through dramatic play. Some of them were to be farmers, some trainmen, some mill hands, and some grocers in different towns. The farmers were to take the wheat to the nearest small town where it could be put on the train and sent to a large city mill many miles away. Here the millers would receive it and, after making it into flour, would put it on another train and send it to the grocers in the different towns where it would be sold to the farmers when they might want it. In order that the play should be a success, much prep- aration was required, and the little farmers were again busy in the shop, making miniature bushel, peck, and other neces- sary measures. These, through the careful planning of the teacher, were circular; all had bottoms of the same size and varied only in height. Incidentally, but logically, they then saw that to be good actors, they must learn how to use these tools in order to measure out their grain.
It was necessary to help them in the logical arrangement of the rather complicated series of acts necessary in their play. Early in the process of making the plan, each child was given a large piece of paper and a pencil, and diagrams were made representing the ideas previously worked out. Circles were used to represent towns and cities, squares to represent farms, lines for railroads, and a pictorial representation of the events of the play was thus worked out.
Other cereals such as corn and oats were studied in the same manner as wheat. The developing activities in each case fur- nished opportunities for close correlation between the shop, the sewing, and the textile and art studios. Needs were many in these miniature living projects. Groups of children or individ- uals frequented the shop for help in making wagons, fence pickets, house lumber, or furnishings. Others besieged the tex-
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tile studio for bags for their grain or to make rugs on their looms. Thence to the art studio for design ideas for either rugs or book covers or illustrations for their written records. There was much need to know what to use and how to use it in their never ending activity. It had the qualities and possibilities of real living; "it was genuine and linked to desired ends. It was not too easy nor yet too hard, but was of such a nature that the child was alternately satisfied with his accomplishment and lured on to greater undertaking.
The study of the farmer's life now took up the animals on his farm. The cow and the dairy products seemed of first im- portance to the children. A list was made of all the foods given by the cow— milk, cream, butter, cheese, the flesh which is used for food, and the skin for leather.6 The group talked about the habits of the cow and watched those in the lot across the street. They concluded that most of a cow's time was spent in eating grass. It was explained to the children that grass contained very little nourishment, and the cows had to eat great quantities of it in order to get enough for their needs. It was noticed that when the cow was biting off the grass, she did not stop to chew it, but ate it very rapidly. The children then observed some of the cows lying in the shade, chewing. Again it was explained that long ago the flesh-eating animals preyed on those which lived on grass. The latter, always in dan- ger when they went out into the open grassy places had to eat quickly. Out of this grew the habit of rolling the cropped grass into balls and swallowing them into the first stomach, where they lay until these animals could return into the comparative safety of the woods. Here, while resting, the muscles of the throat brought these balls up into the mouth again, where they were thoroughly chewed and then swallowed into the second stomach.
The winter quarter was begun with talk of the sheep-raising business on a farm. The kind of land was considered that a
« The work in cooking was in close correlation. In the science laboratory an attempt was made to tan leather. The various daily products were studied, and butter was made by each child in an improvised individual churn.
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fanner would use for the pasture for sheep. After much dis- cussion supplemented at the right moment by bits of informa- tion and timely reference to maps on the part of the teacher, the group finally decided that a temperate climate would be the best. The cold winters would make the wool grow well, and the sheep would not miss their warm coats in the summer. On the globe, they found the principal sheep-raising districts, which were located midway between the equator and the poles. The raw wool was examined and its agency in seed distribution was noted. The natural oil in the wool of the sheep was dis- covered by dipping the wool into water and noticing how it shed the water. Wool was compared with duck feathers that also shed water; wool was burned to get the odor, which the children compared with burning fat and burning hair. They then tested different kinds of cloth to see if they could tell those made of wool, first by feeling of it, then by noticing its absorbent qualities, and then by burning. As a next step, the wool was pulled out and twisted to show how easily it could be made into thread. The manner of shearing, of washing, and of transporting the fleece to the factory was discussed. Through picture, song, and story this age-old occupation was surrounded by and linked to some of its many esthetic connotations.
EXTENSION OF INTEREST TO OTHER CLIMATES AND PRODUCTS
The children now seemed ready and interested to go farther afield and think about the farming crops of other climates than their own. Accordingly, a study was made of cotton. The plant was drawn and finally pulled to pieces to find how many seeds the ball contained. As these seemed more than were necessary for replanting, the question came up as to what could be done with the excess. As the children did not know and had no suggestions, it was necessary to tell them. They opened some of the seeds and saw that the inside is like a little nut, which they thought might be good to eat. They were told that, ground up, it made an excellent food for cattle and saw for themselves that the inside of the seed is very rich and oily. They then learned more of the characteristics and uses of
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cotton-seed oil. They wanted to plant some of the cotton seeds and raise cotton themselves. As it was too cold for this out-of- doors, some was put in flower-pots in the house, and at the same time corn and wheat were planted to see which would be the first to germinate. In this connection, the question of climate came up, and the children found the places on the globe where cotton could easily be raised. A cotton plantation was described to them, and they were told of the old-fashioned way of separating the seeds from the cotton. An ounce of the cotton was weighed, and ten children took ten minutes to re- move the seeds. They saw that this was a very slow and im- possible process by hand and suggested the use of machinery. When told of the invention of the cotton-gin, they readily understood that this would make the cotton much cheaper. They then spent some time in removing the seeds from a quarter-pound of cotton and making it into bales. A small quantity of picked cotton was then ginned and with much speculation and interest was again weighed, and found to have lost one half its weight. Their written conclusion was that the seeds made up half of the weight of the boll. In the process of weighing the children became familiar with the pound, half- pound, and other weights and grew able to tell how many ounce weights are equivalent to a pound, how many quarter- pound weights to the pound or to the half-pound, and how many ounces there are in each of these weights. They also spent a little time counting by two, three, four, and five.
The ginned cotton was finally baled and prepared for ship- ment to the factory. For this they first cut four-inch squares of paper, working out the problem for themselves, which served as patterns for the cloth squares in which they sewed the cotton. This was then tied with string. Some was shipped to a cloth factory in the north and some went to be made into thread. To help them summarize the whole process, they were shown a case of samples of cotton in its various stages of manu- facture from the raw cotton to the finished product. After talking about it, the children were asked to describe the process without looking at the samples. As they could not do this the whole lesson was repeated until they were able to give a con-
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secutive description. They then commenced to make little combs for combing the cotton, as this is the first step after it reaches the mill.
During this period at the close of each step of the process, a written record was made of the work. Often this was put in the form of a drama. Toward the close of the quarter, and after the carpenters of the group had finished the train of cars which was to transport their cotton crop from the factory to the wholesale stores, the complete dramatization was under- taken. Parts were assigned and the different steps in the process were clearly outlined so that each child would have a definite idea of the part he was to take. The children made a list of the places to be represented in the play, such as the plantation, the factory, the wholesale and retail stores, and so on. This was written on the board and opposite each place was written the names of the children who were to be in that particular part. Some hands on the plantation, some trainmen, some factory hands, and so on. It took quite a time to organize this play, and several rehearsals on different days were necessary be- fore things went smoothly. Each child soon realized the part he must play and was able to act out the steps of the different processes in their right order. The written story of their work was finished. It recorded the chief facts they knew about cotton and was read in an assembly of the whole school.
The next development in the story grew out of the past ex- perience and led them on into a new experiment. When trying to locate the places on the globe where cotton might grow, they had noticed Egypt and the adjoining desert of Sahara and could not understand why cotton would not grow in the desert. The conditions there were explained, and they realized that cotton needs water as well as heat. One of the children im- mediately asked what farmers do when they cannot get water on their farms. On looking at the globe they saw the great stretch of country in the western part of this continent where there is never a sufficient water supply.
In talking over the causes for this, they said right away that the water would have to come from the Pacific Ocean, which is the nearest large body of water. It was explained how the
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winds blowing across the lands would strike high mountains and would lose their moisture. Some of the children said that the wind could still get over the mountains, but that it would be a dry wind. Then, looking from the eastern side of this dry •district, they saw that the east wind after traveling over the land such a great distance would also be dry. One of the chil- dren had been in Lower California and spoke of that as a dry country. Another child brought up the question of why it is a dry country when it is so near the sea shore where it can get such a supply of water. One boy suggested that the wind might blow from a different direction, but it was decided that the wind from any direction other than the west would be dry because of the mountains. In another period the same topic was discussed and the same conclusion reached.
Again they studied the barren district in the western part of this country and again noted the mountains to the west with the understanding that the western sides of the mountains would be places of great rainfall. They suggested that if they could get the water from the mountains for these dry regions, it would be "all right." It might be carried by train in carts; but they soon saw this was impracticable, and the problem was left for solution until the next period when they launched into the methods of irrigation. This involved a good deal of ex- perimentation on the sand-table. After much questioning as to the best method of irrigation, they thought that the natural flow of water from a high place to a lower one could be uti- lized, and by means of ditches the water could be taken into the different parts of a farm. Their idea was that the supply of water from mountain streams would be small at certain seasons of the year, but could be stored in large tanks. They then went to the sand-box and built farms on this principle. They poured water into their lake in the hills, but some of them found that they did not get a supply of water on their farms because they had made their ditches without any regard to the natural slopes. A talk followed about the conditions under which water would flow from one place to another. A good many experi- ments were necessary, but finally, they decided that the supply tank must be on a hill and the ditches must extend down a
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slope, or the water would not run in them. They next decided to use pipes instead of ditches, as the ditches might get clogged up or the water might soak into the ground, and some men- tioned the loss from evaporation which would take place from ditches in a warm country. None of the children, however, realized that the water could go up the hill as high as the place it started from. A high tank was therefore arranged with an outlet of bent glass tubing, and the children found that the water in the tube rose as high as that in the tank. If they raised or lowered the tank, the water would also rise or sink, the water in the tube staying at the level of that in the tank. After this experimentation it was decided that the best system of irrigation would be to place the tank on the highest hill and put the pipes on the slopes. The next problem was raised by a child who asked how water could get to a second story that was higher than the level of the lake. A little city was built of blocks in the sand-box, and the problem was how to get water to a point higher than any of the houses. The children's solution was a water-tower. Water was pumped from the level of the lake to the level of the tower, and they proved to their own satisfaction that it would rise about as high in the pipes as its level in the tower.
The next separate enterprise was the lumber camp. Out of their own experience and needs, the children realized that great quantities of wood are needed for houses, tables, and chairs, and their curiosity was aroused as to where the supply came from and how. Lack of space, however, renders it impossible to quote these records of the lumbering process, the development of the sawmill, and the transportation of the finished product to the retail dispensing houses; nor is it possible to include the succeeding project of coal and ore mining and its transporta- tion.
As previously indicated, each occupation was often initiated and usually concluded with a dramatic play. The children thus demonstrated to themselves their gain in power to image and to execute. Their first efforts to dramatize the play of "Miller" compared with the later detailed and complicated drama of "Cotton" showed a decided gain in power to plan, to carry out,
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and to consider the end in terms of the means available to reach the end.
The written record of the work continued at regular inter- vals and was printed for the group from time to time on the school press and then read by them with great interest. Some work on phonetics was slipped in with the reading of the records, and the children learned easily the sounds of about eight consonants, were able to give the sound of the latter when they saw it written, and could write it when given the sound. As their ability to read increased, more time was given to collateral reading both to them and by them, until toward the end of the year a half-an-hour a day was devoted to read- ing and the writing of connected sentences. The reports com- ment that "they read with intelligence, have a good idea of phonics, and show great independence in forming new words."
SUMMARY OF THE FIRST THREE YEARS
Thus in the first three years of his school life the child's play enlarged from the mimic games of his home people to those of the persons who contributed to the daily life of the home. His interests gradually extended to their activities and the things they did, made, or bought. Foods were traced to their sources, and finished products of wood or clothing to their raw materials. So far as he was able, he reproduced these activities and himself learned to shape materials and means to reach his ends or to fashion his ideas. In the shop he was shown from the first the right ways of handling the saw or the plane, as he made from the wood of this tree or that something to use in expressing his ideas. In the textile room he fingered the raw wool, the cotton, the flax, or the silk and compared it with the cloth of his coat or the shining luster of his mother's dress, and the old lure of "the how" and "the why" began to stir. In all the activities which filled his day, spinning, weaving, cooking, shop-work, modeling, dramatic plays, conversation, story- telling, or discussion, he was vitally interested and constantly absorbed knowledge of materials and processes. His activities were always fundamental and typical and, therefore, related
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and recapitulated his similar previous attempts, enriching and enlarging them into more definite purposes and plans. Thus, experience, was an onflowing stream continually enlarged from all sides by the pouring in of useful knowledge.
As life flowed on, the child became conscious of his social relationships: that there were others in the group like him who had rights and privileges; that it was far more fun to play games with them even if he must renounce somewhat his own way and consider the way of others in relation to his own. It was more pleasant to work with them, even if he must think of the consequences of what he did in relation to others' plans, and he soon came to see that his consideration of and work with others was to the advantage of all, that by pooling his- effort with that of the group, larger and more interesting re- sults were obtained. There was a noticeable difference between those of the children who had been trained for three years in the discipline of the school's activities and those who had but recently entered. The former took hold of new situations much more competently than the new comers.
All along the way the function of the teacher was to assist and further, by direction and anticipation, to remove the too- difficult elements of the situation such as search for material and too detailed preparation of material. At the same time she must see to it that the way was not made too plain, that there was enough hindrance to his plan to stimulate his fac- ulties of resourcefulness and judgment in directing the choice of ways or means so that the meaning of his plays, his games, his activities continually grew. New needs constantly arose in process, and new responsibilities were as constantly assumed by the child. The effect of discovering, of inventing, of using facts and processes to further his activity, enlarged his ideal of it, gave an increased confidence in his ability to handle ma- terials and