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definite information as to just how many and which ones of the smaller cities support such schools, but the number would probably exceed 200. New Orleans, which begins this work this summer, is the last large city to take it up.

If we lock for the cause of the very rapid development of vacation schools during the last five years, I think we shall find it in the action of the board of education of New York in taking over, in the year 1898, the 10 vacation schools of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor. Superintendent Stewart was placed in charge and given sufficient funds to show the possibilities of the movement. Superintendent Stewart, being a man of unusual originality and thoroughly in touch with the movement, made such a success of the work that all the leading papers had frequent articles about it and public interest was awakened all over the country. The work in New York arising from a graver need seems to be flourishing more vigorously than elsewhere. In the summer of 1901 there were over 1,000 teachers in its vacation schools and playgrounds and nearly $100,000 was expended. During the summer of 1903 New York maintained 58 vacation schools, which employed 1,400 teachers. While I have not seen any estimate of the cost of vacation schools for 1903, it will certainly largely exceed $100,000, and in the budget for 1904 an increase of $183,000 above the budget for 1903 is asked for. There is now a special superintendent who devotes all her time to this work and the evening play centers, which are carried on throughout the year.

It is impossible to predict just how far this work is to spread in this country, but the present indications are that every city in the North of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants will soon have vacation schools and that these schools will also exist in many villages of from 3,000 inhabitants upward.

It does not seem likely that this movement is to take as deep root abroad as in America, because the summer vacation is so much shorter there, and much better provision for the children is generally found in the parks, municipal playgrounds, school playgrounds, etc. However, a vacation school was started by Mrs. Humphrey Ward at the Passmore Edwards Settlement at Tavistock Place, England, in the summer of 1902. The experiment was a great success and is to be continued. There is a movement to start vacation schools in Amsterdam. There seem to be no vacation schools in Canada, nor can the writer get word of any being started in Mexico or in any South American country, though there is a movement to start such schools in Buenos Ayres.

COURSE OF STUDY.

The vacation schools have been experiment stations, and there has been little uniformity in the courses of study in the past. At first the idea was simply to keep the children off the street and keep them occupied, a merely negative aim. It soon became evident, however, that if anything was to be done it was best to do something worth while. As soon as educators came to consider the problem carefully they saw it was not merely a question of keeping the children off the street that was before them, but that they also had the problem of supplying the children with something that would take the place of those old duties of childhood that had disappeared, of furnishing manual activities and problems similar to those with which our ancestors had had to deal, and of restoring to the child something of the environment of nature which he had lost. When these new ideals came to be perceived, it became evident that it was not the children of the poor alone that needed vacation schools, but they were as necessary for the children of the well-to-do as for the children of the needy, for the children of the village as for the children of the city, unless the child got from his home life and surroundings this invaluable acquaintance with work and nature.

Many experiments have been tried in order to determine what is most valuable

for vacation school work. Each city has tried its own experiments, and in some, as in New York, there was at one time a different curriculum in each school. However, the work is becoming more uniform every year. In broad outlines it is now well defined.

Nearly all vacation schools have manual training as the basis of their work. This is supplemented by nature study, story telling, music, local geography, history, and excursions.

Manual training.-With manual training the first idea of the beginners of the movement seems to have been an occupation which should keep the children busy and contented. Since then three other well-defined ideals have arisen. These ideals are not always consciously held, but the educators have seen that in the quarters of the poor, where the struggle with want is hard and bitter, the mother too often works with the father at the bench or in the factory, and there is no time or energy left to teach the daughter the activities of the home, if such a habitation can be said to be a home. Then, too, the parents in our slums have nearly always come from some foreign land of oppression, where the refinements of life have never flourished. They scarcely have a conception of the standards of living of our American people. Under these conditions the children must reform the home, and instead of learning the household arts there, as children usually do, the school must teach the arts and refinements of the home to the children, who, reversing the traditionary method, must teach them to their parents. Led by a knowledge of such conditions the New York board, and the boards of education in most cities, have taught in the vacation schools nearly ali the activities of the home. These have included sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, laundering, cooking, setting table, waiting on table, washing dishes, parlor decorating, bandaging cuts or bruises, nursing the sick, care of babies, etc. Especial attention has been given to an attempt to create an appreciation for the neat, clean, orderly, and tasteful arrangement of the room and work done. Politeness and helpfulness are insisted on. The boys have been taught to make brackets, wall pockets, and other things which might assist in making the house attractive.

The first motive to become prominent in determining the nature of the work for boys was a consideration of the disappearance of children's chores or duties from modern life. The country boy, by the time he had finished the district school, has learned to perform all the activities of the farm, but the city boy, by the time he has finished grammar school, probably has not learned to do any work. The father's work is often at too great a distance for his son to know much about it.

Perceiving these deficiencies, the vacation schools are teaching a great variety of occupations to the boys. Of these the most common are whittling and carpentry, but wood carving, venetian and bent-iron work, weaving, basketry, chair caning, and cobbling are also found in many schools.

The third ideal is a more purely educational one. It has been most influential in determining the method rather than the nature of the work. This ideal sees in the development of the hand and its activities the secret of the development of moter areas of the brain, the origin of speech, and all the higher mental activities. It reasons that to revive these old activities in something like the order in which they were formerly pursued by the race will stimulate and develop the corresponding brain cells as no later superimposed activities can. This has led in one or two cases, as at Andover, to the teacher taking the boys into the woods, where they built their own houses, constructed their beds, made fishhooks, and caught a considerable part of their own living.

This ideal sees in doing a part of education that is quite as important as knowing, and doubts the value of an education which teaches a child to know without

impelling him to do. It seeks to teach such patience and accuracy in achievement as life will require of the man.

This ideal demands also that the children shall not spend too much of their time on set tasks, but that the activities shall lay hold on some deep interest in the child and be an expression of himself. It doubts the value of boys spending much time in making fancy joints and sections, but sets them to making carts and boats and such things as the boys want to make. It sets the girls to making dresses or doll clothes instead of learning a dozen different stitches. In so doing it hopes to secure interest, prolonged effort, and pride in the work when it is done.

The constructive work is carried on in connection with the work in designing in many schools, as in New York, and the children first make a plan of the basket or cart they wish to construct and then execute it.

Nature study.-Nature study has been another subject. There seems to be a general awakening of interest in nature study of late years. This new interest has come, in part at least, as a result of a belief in the moral value of natural surroundings, and of the feeling that one who is really fond of nature has an element of nobility in his character which will tend to keep him from doing mean and contemptible things. The nature work in the vacation schools has also been influenced perhaps by the feeling that the natural place for a child in the summer time was the country; and that if the child could not go to the country, the schools must bring the country to the child.

There has been a very great diversity of method in the different cities. In New York there is a special department of nature study under a general director. During the first years specimens were gathered in the country every morning and sent by express to the schools, where they were made the subject of talks, of lessons in drawing, etc. Now nature is studied from window boxes that are planted by the children, from outdoor gardens when these are available, from aquaria, which are furnished by the New York Aquarium, and from mounted specimens, which are furnished by the Natural History Museum.

An interesting experiment in nature study has been conducted in New York for the past two summers by Mrs. Henry Parsons. A tract of land has been secured in the De Witt Clinton Park and laid out into garden beds 4 feet by 12. There are some 300 beds, or farms, as they are called, this summer. Each of these small farms is owned for the season by some small farmer boy or girl who plants some seven different kinds of vegetables in it. These throve last year and were not molested. The vegetables that had not been used were pulled up, roots, leaves, and all, at the end of the season and sent around to the different schools.

In Providence, Baltimore, and Pittsburg the children have cultivated gardens of their own, either on the school grounds or on lots near by. Pittsburg has a very well-arranged course of nature study, besides planting window boxes and having gardens. The first two weeks were given to a study of the common fruits and vegetables to be found in the groceries of the neighborhood. The third week was given to the study of the common birds from the cases loaned by the Carnegie Museum. The fourth week was devoted to the study of the wild flowers of the neighborhood, and the fifth to the study of insects from the Carnegie Museum. Nature study in the school curriculums generally means a study of flowers; but it sometimes means a study of rocks, trees, birds, animals, and insects.

Chicago has made nature study the basis of all the work. The children were taken on very carefully planned excursions one day a week. A large part of the work for the remaining four days was given to the discussion of the things seen and the study of the things brought home.

It is to be regretted that a closer correlation with the city park departments can not be effected, whereby the natural objects of the park might be made more serviceable for study. If the park departments could be induced to devote some part

of their park area to the systematic growing of wild flowers and another to the raising of the common vegetables, & very great service might be done to the children. In Germany flowers are distributed to the schools from the parks just as books are now distributed from our public libraries, and birds and animals are in some cases sent around from the museums. In order to have nature study highly successful in a city like New York, where the land is so valuable, some such arrangement must be made with the park department, or the board of education must establish gardens of its own and send around flowers and plants to the different schools as it would books.

It seems to me a question worth considering whether the time has not come for each school and playground, in order to cultivate a love for animals and promote nature study, to maintain a small and very accessible zoological garden.

The new custom of museums and aquariums of leaning specimens and living fish to schools, which seems to be coming in now, is an exceedingly hopeful sign and promise of progress in this field.

City history and geography.—A number of cities, as New York, Philadelphia, and Cambridge, have undertaken to familiarize the pupils of the vacation schools with the local geography and history of the city. This work has aimed to give the children a practical acquaintance with the city and its environs by excursions to all the principal points of interest. It has sought to interest the children in the city's history by excursions to places connected with its past. New York has a general director and six special teachers of this work.

Excursions.-Excursions have been one of the constant features of the vacation schools. There have been three chief purposes in the excursions carried onpleasure, nature study, and the study of historic spots. In very many cases the railroads and street-car companies have carried the children free, as in St. Louis and Pittsburg. Generally they have at least given a reduced fare. New York, however, has generally paid full price for transportation. In some cities the children have paid for their excursion themselves, but in nearly all cases the expense has been borne by the school. Pittsburg provided its children with a picnic dinner as well. In St. Louis a practice was made of taking parties of the older boys to see the great baseball games that were played in that city. Two of the most ambitious excursions the writer has seen any account of were the trip of the Chicago children by whaleback steamer to Milwaukee and back, and the trip of the Philadelphia children to Atlantic City for a day on the beach.

Story-telling.-Story-telling has been a feature of nearly all vacation schools. Some have had a regular period set aside for story-telling. There has been no outline of what stories should be told, so far as is known, but the children's classic stories have generally been suggested.

Story-telling has perhaps been even more popular in connection with playgrounds than with vacation schools. Pittsburg has had this very good arrangement. The Carnegie Library has furnished a librarian to take charge of the circulating library kept in the school. This librarian has given a certain pericd each day to storytelling. Another exceedingly suggestive arrangement in Pittsburg was the placing out of a number of home libraries in the homes of the children of the vacation schools.

Music.-Music is so intimately connected with the idea of freedom and jollity that one is surprised that it has received so little attention in the vacation schools. The only place where it has been given prominence, so far as is known to the writer, is Boston.

Scholastic work.—As to how far it is wise to teach regular school studies in vacation time may be a question. Newark and Denver are examples of cities where this has been largely done. In Denver the work has been especially adapted for children who had failed of promotion or who wished to make up a

grade. The work was for the forenoon only and there was no home work. It seems to me there might well be a class or two of this kind in each of the great vacation schools of a city like New York. The child perhaps would not need to give more than half of his forenoon to this work, and thus would avoid the discouragement of being left behind by his class. It might be a question, however, if it might not encourage listless work during the term if the child knew he had a chance to make up his deficiencies during the vacation.

The teachers in our vacation schools are coming to be a regular corps at fixed salaries, holding their positions from year to year.

The discpline in the vacation schools is usually very lenient. Freedom of movement and freedom of conversation are allowed within limits. This gives a far greater social opportunity to the child, and it is to be hoped that the teacher will stand in a more personal relation to him than is usual in the regular school work.

ATTENDANCE.

Regular attendance is always a problem for the summer school. The child is always getting opportunities to go on picnics or excursions or to pay a visit to the country. All of these things, of course, interfere with the regularity of his attendance. It has been the custom of some vacation schools to secure regular attendance by keeping a waiting list and giving the place of any child who is absent twice without a sufficient excuse to a waiting child.

SOCIAL AND MORAL CULTURE.

An idea which has been influential in the vacation school from the first is the idea of social and moral culture. The vacation school has always been regarded as a semiphilanthropy, and as such it has been expected to exercise a good influence over the children. It has sought to do this by keeping the children away from the temptations of the street and by the direct influence of the teachers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Constructive and Preventive Philanthrophy. Joseph Lee.

The Battle with the Slums. Jacob Riis.

American Municipal Progress. Charles Zueblin.

Vacation Schools and Playgrounds. Harper's Magazine, June, 1902.

The City for the Children. Outlook, September 6, 1903.

II. PLAYGROUNDS.

GENERAL CONDITIONS.

Before entering upon a discussion of the present playground movement in America it may be not inappropriate to give some account of the status of play in the countries in which this movement took its rise.

German playgrounds.—As Germany has been the source of most pedagogic movements of the last century, so it has been the source of the playground movement as well. Our present system started in the sand gardens of Berlin. In Germany there has been a very great interest in play of late, and great efforts have been made to encourage it. Commissions have been sent to England to investigate the system of athletics in the English schools. Special inducements have been offered to English cricket and football teams to tour Germany and play matches in the different cities. Play conferences are being held in the great cities every year, and thousands of teachers are being taught to play games with the children. A German annual of some four or five hundred pages, Das Jahrbuch des Volkundkinderspiel, is entirely devoted to the promotion of play. In

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