The Department of Elementary Education of the National Education Association convened in regular session on Wednesday afternoon, July 2, 1919, at 2:00 o'clock, in the Main Hall, Auditorium, Milwaukee, Wis. The meeting was called to order by Abbie Louise Day, president. In the absence of the secretary the president appointed Gail Calmerton, primary supervisor, Fort Wayne, Ind., as secretary pro tem. The general topic for the meeting was "Solving the New Problems in the Elementary School," and the following program was presented: "Instruction of Elementary-School Children in the Use of Books and Libraries' O. S. Rice, state supervisor of school libraries, Madison, Wis. "Revision of the Elementary-School Curriculum"-Theda Gildemeister, State Normal School, Winona, Minn. "Reports on Practical Experiments in Everyday Schoolrooms in Revision of Programs"-Anne E. Logan, assistant superintendent of schools, Cincinnati, Ohio. "Cooperation of Homes with Schools”—Milo B. Hillegas, state commissioner of education, Montpelier, Vt. "Teacher Participation in School Administration"-Mary C. Harris, former chairman of Teachers' Educational Council, Minneapolis, Minn. "Equipping and Furnishing the Modern School"-Ella Victoria Dobbs, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo. A motion was past authorizing the president to appoint a committee to cooperate with similar committees of the Department of Kindergarten Education and the National Council of Primary Education in working out common problems, and the following committee was appointed: Theda Gildemeister, State Normal School, Winona, Wis., chairman. The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: Vice-President-Zenio C. Scott, assistant superintendent of schools, Trenton, N.J. GAIL CALMERTON, Secretary pro tem PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS INSTRUCTION OF ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CHILDREN IN THE USE OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES O. S. RICE, STATE SUPERVISOR OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES, MADISON, WIS. There is an age and stage when it is more important than at any other time that pupils succeed in their school work, and that stage is reacht in the borderland of childhood and youth, the upper grades. Then is the flood tide of formative stress and strain, and the issues of life are then being determined. Is school work, as it should be, most successful in these critical years? Let us consider some figures that bear on this question. In Strayer and Thorndike's "Educational Administration" there is a tabulation of the results obtained by questioning eighth-graders in the schools of the city of New York and nearby cities in New Jersey as to the grades which they had to repeat. According to these figures (the medians are given), 24 out of every thousand of these eighth-graders had to repeat the second grade, 39 out of a thousand the third grade, 43 out of a thousand the fourth grade, 46 out of a thousand the fifth grade, 70 out of a thousand the sixth grade, and 95 out of a thousand the seventh grade. If those who left school in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades had continued until they were in the eighth grade the disparity in the number of repeaters between upper and lower grades would have been even more striking than that revealed by these figures. The fact that four times as many per thousand had to repeat the seventh grade as compared with the second grade can only mean that the upper-grade work is decidedly less successful than the work of the lower grades. The popularity of the junior high school idea, it may be said in passing, is doubtless largely due to the general recognition of this fact. There are, of course, a number of reasons for this failure in uppergrade work which will readily occur to you, such as the greater difficulty in controlling children at this age, the lack of proper facilities in the way of liberalized courses of study and equipment suited to the varied needs of the children, etc. It is not at all a question of whether the teachers in the upper grades are as good teachers as those in the lower grades, but one of relative difficulty in the securing of results. In lighter vein we may say too that the upper-grade teachers inherit all the faults of the teachers in the lower grades. What I conceive to be one of the main reasons why the work in the upper grades is less successful than that in the lower grades can be illustrated with the subject of reading. In the primary grades the teacher sees to it that the child knows every word in the sentence and has the thought before she calls upon him to read orally. With such a method the efficient teacher is sure to get good results, and frequently primary reading is found to be excellent. However, as the child passes along in the grades more and more new words occur in the advance lesson, and more and more allusions to literature, mythology, science, art, history, etc. This increasing number of new words and allusions makes the sum total of new matter in the advance lesson so large that the teacher cannot, as she could in the primary grades, make sure beforehand that the children know all these things before she calls upon them to read in class. Unless, therefore, the children can and do make large use of printed sources of information in the preparation of their lessons the reading must of necessity be poorer in the upper than in the lower grades. We can reason. in the same way with reference to geography, history, and other branches in which reference work is a feature. There can be no doubt that one of the main reasons why school work is less successful in the upper than in the lower grades is because as children pass from the lower to the upper grades and need more and more the ability to find information for themselves from printed sources they are not given training and facilities in proportion to that increasing need. When they pass from school into life and are thrown entirely upon their own resources they need this kind of training even more than they do for school purposes. Two years ago the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction tested eighth-graders, and in some instances high-school students as well, in a dozen village and city school systems of the state to determine whether or not they had received any training in the most obvious reference sources, such as they should know not only for school but also for life purposes. There was not a single passing grade earned in this examination! There were many zeros, tho the examination was one in which a large proportion of the pupils should have scored nearly 100 per cent. And yet Wisconsin has probably done as much in the way of school-library work as any other state in the Union. Why has not such instruction been provided in the course of study? The answer to this is: We need as laboratories therefor well-equipt, properly organized, and effectively supervised school libraries, and school libraries of any kind, taking the country as a whole into consideration, are a very recent addition to the school equipment. But now many states have school libraries in practically every school, and public libraries are accessible to a large proportion of schools, so we can no longer be excused for neglecting this vital part of education. The first need is a course of study in books and libraries which shall be as definite in scope and as rigidly required as the traditional school subjects. A number of courses have been workt out for the high school, notably that of the Central High School, Detroit. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has issued a definite course of study for the grades in the use of books and libraries. A mimeographt outline based upon the Wisconsin course has been distributed here. I trust that it may at least prove suggestive to other school systems. To what extent can we depend upon the public library to give such lessons? A glance at the course of study in your hands will reveal at once that there is altogether too much for even the best-administered public library to take care of. The great bulk of the lessons must and should be given by the teachers themselves. The few lessons in reference work which in our judgment can with advantage be taken care of by the public library are indicated in the outline course here distributed. But with a curriculum taking 100 per cent of the teachers' and pupils' time now, how shall we find room for this new work? Thru the introduction of a labor-saving educational process. As children are trained to help themselves more and more the teacher will need to help them less and less, and at the same time she will be giving them valuable training for life-purposes. The proposition that we have here then is less work and more success, which is better even than less work and more pay, which it includes. Furthermore, if children are trained to help themselves to find information when they need it, it will not seem necessary to cram their crania with a multitude of facts, "tanking them up" for life, as it were. If the policy obtains of teaching only a reasonable minimum of things and, for the rest, training the children to be self-helpful in finding information when they need it, our crowded curricula can be greatly reduced, and both teachers and pupils and school and society will be gainers thereby. REVISION OF THE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM THEDA GILDEMEISTER, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, WINONA, MINN. As your program indicates I have been given the honor of emphasizing the revision of our elementary-school curriculum as one means of solving some of the new problems which we are facing, and that it is an exceptionally important one you must in part know from the place given it in the comprehensive program so ably outlined this morning by Mrs. McNaught, chairman of the national commission to study all the problems of elementary education. A further brief consideration of why the elementary curriculum is of such importance, tho well known to you, is worth reviewing. First, because the perpetuity of any state or society depends upon the conservation of those conventions and ideals which the group has evolved and now values, and, second, since the adults of the group desire the youth of the race to acquire these conventions and ideals more quickly, more easily, and with better results than they did themselves, society establisht schools as the most economical means of indoctrinating the youth of the race with those ideals which insure social perpetuity and progress. Hence any school curriculum must reflect the ideals of the country in which it is operating, and therefore must our own curriculum reflect those ideals which we as a nation believe worthy of perpetuationthe fundamental ideals of democracy. What only a few of those ideals are we must take time to note: First, there is the ideal of personal equality, or, differently named, self-respect. But self-respect depends so largely on respect for others and upon others' respect for the self that the second ideal, faith in others, can scarcely be separated from the first. The more highly one prizes his own individuality the greater regard he has for the rights and abilities of others. The more highly he respects the acts, ideals, and thoughts of others the greater faith he puts in them, and out of this faith in his fellows grows a third American ideal, cooperation-cooperation built on the belief that every individual's best is necessary to the effectiveness of the result. As the complexity of a situation increases, effective cooperation demands organization, system, a recognition of relative values, and the consequent need of leaders. The constant opportunity of alternating in leading and in following which a democratic society provides makes for superior leadership. Equally false with the notion that once-earned leadership should be continued is the notion that only the poor, the ignorant, and the hardworking ones should rule. There is no place in our land for either aristocracy (of whatever kind, wealth, or power) or for Bolshevism. All the people must cooperate for the benefit of all-no class must be excluded! Participation then in the alternating capacities of leader and follower, so that each individual and his environment perpetually interact and grow together, is one ideal of democracy. Because up to the present time the average length of teaching service has been so brief (between two and three years), and because the preparation so far demanded has not been great enough to permit young teachers at once to enter into the field of larger vision, and hence wisely to participate in curriculum-making, curricula have had to be made by the relatively few teachers who stayed longer in service, and especially by the few who had the coveted "vision" as well as practical knowledge of school administration and of curricula needs. The day is now at hand when, because of better salaries, but especially because of the social recognition being given to teaching, more of you, men as well as women, will remain in the profession; better and better preparation for educational work is also to be demanded, so that inexperienst teachers will earlier appreciate the larger problems of education. In consequence an ever-increasing number of teachers everywhere must be and will be participating in the revision of our national curriculum for elementary schools. Such a curriculum can never be finisht; it must be a dynamic thing, ever in the process |