Zhc flIMami Bulletin Series VIII FEBRUARY, 1910 Number 8 OHIO STATE NORMAL COLLEGE PUBLICATIONS TEACHERS’ BULLETIN No. 12 Principles Controlling the Course of Study of the Oxford Public Schools J. W. HECKERT Published Monthly by Miami University And entered at Postoffice , Oxford , Ohio, as Second Class Mail Matter PUBLICATIONS OF OHIO STATE NORMAL COL¬ LEGE OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY. These publications form a series of teachers’ bulletins issued by the Ohio State Normal College of Miami University for the benefit of the teachers of the State, and in the interest of public education. All requests from teachers desiring these bulletins, or information regarding educational movements, will receive prompt attention. Address Teachers’ Aid Bureau, Ohio State Normal College, Oxford, Ohio. 1. Nature-Study, by George W. Hoke, 12 pp., 3 figs., October, 1903. Outline for study of trees, weeds, insects, birds, etc., with list of books for preference. 2. Geography, by George W. Hoke, 15 pp., 1 plate, May, 1904. Treats of principles of Geography, and Regional Geography, with sugges¬ tive exercises for class work. Evolution of Public Education in Ohio, (A) Legislation, by Harvey C. Minnich, 20 pp., 2 maps, March, 1907. A historical account of school legislation. 4. The Manual Arts, by F. C. Whitcomb, 15 pp., April 1907. Sugges¬ tions as to course of study and equipment, with special reference to needs of small school systems. 5. The Soil and Its Relation to Plants, by B. M. Davis, 35 pp., 6 figs., May, 1907. Subject presented by means of simple experiments. 6 . Evolution of Public Education in Ohio, (B) Certification, by Harvey C. Minnich, 23 pp., November, 1907. Continuation of No. 3. 7 . Experimental Studies of Plant Growth, by B. M. Davis, 31 pp., 17 figs., May, 1908. Forty-two experiments suitable for small high schools. 8. Stories for the Elementary Grades, by Anna E. Logan, 20 pp., Sep¬ tember, 1908. Arranged with special reference to the needs of teachers, introducing,or increasing story-telling work in their schools. 9 . Arithmetic in the Grades, by T. L. Feeney, 19 pp., January, 1909. General discussion followed by outline of course of study. 10. English in the Grades, by Frances Gibson Richard, 26 pp., March, 1909. Detailed outline including titles of selections for all the grades. 11. The Soil and Its Relation to Plants, by B. M. Davis, 36 pp., December, 1909. Revised edition of No 5. 2 Principl es Controlling the Course of Study of the Oxford Public School. In order to make the work of the training department of the Ohio State Normal College and the teaching in the Pub¬ lic School of Oxford as effective as possible it has been deemed wise to frame a new course of study for the latter. The aim is twofold. In the first place, the welfare of the school demands that its teachers be given some definite scheme outlining the work of the several grades. In the second place we desire that our teachers in training form the habit of using the course of study. We want them to consult it for guidance in their work from week to week; thus learning to carry out, in the grade they are teaching, the aim of the school. We desire that they become conscious of the fact that they are to function in a system; that their grade is but one of a number, and that, in order that they may do their work as well as possible, they ought to know what the children have done before they came to them, and what they are supposed to prepare them for in the course of a year's work. This cannot be done without constant reference to the course of study. The present article will set forth mere¬ ly a few of the fundamental principles which we believe must control the making of the course of study for the ele¬ mentary school. These principles, while sufficiently well known to the educational public, should be stated in this connection in order to explain the raison d'etre of certain features of the outlines to be published in future numbers of the Bulletin. It is quite generally agreed at the present time that the aim of the educational procedure, the end to be attained, must be sought for in ethics and sociology. Whether this aim is stated as social efficiency or as the ability and will¬ ingness to realize the ideal purposes, thus helping to build 3 up a world of eternal values, is immaterial; the idea is the same in the two cases. What we are really trying to do is to bring the child into possession of certain materials of knowledge which will enable him to understand his environ¬ ment; to train his mind and his body to make use of this knowledge for right purposes; and finally to make him will¬ ing, enthusiastic if possible, to act in accordance with his knowledge and ability, using both for right ends. This end or aim demands that the subject matter embodied in the course of study be of such a character as to enable the child to understand and react to his environment. Mow social and industrial conditions of today are very different from those of former days. One need not go back so very far in order to see this. The fathers and mothers of the present generation of children can give many illustra¬ tions of tasks little and big which they as children had to perform in and around the house. These tasks which at the time often seemed mere drudgery had really an educative value. The children of that time received an insight into the problems of the home and skill in helping to solve those problems which the children of the present time do not re¬ ceive. Training of the mind in so far as these tasks led the child to see and understand the social and industrial situa¬ tion of the time; and training of the hand in so far as he was required to aid in the care of the home and to perform other duties assigned him. With the specialization in trades, or rather the substitution of the manufactory for the little shop; with the movement of the farming population to the city; with the introduction of machinery into many of the processes in the various industries formerly requiring skill of hand; with the substitution by the family of the boarding house for housekeeping; there is no longer that opportunity for educational activity that formerly existed. If this is true it would seem that the school of today ought to do some¬ thing to meet that situation and give that training which was formerly given by the home. The inference then would be that the schools must teach something besides the three R’s; in fact most educators are convinced that mere train¬ ing in the three R’s would constitute about as good a train- 4 ing for the life of today as would a thoro course in the Chi¬ nese Classics. The course then must embrace many topics which for¬ merly had no legitimate place in it. It must be enriched, as the expression goes. But just as soon as we plan to enrich it two other questions arise, and with reference to them there is considerable difference of opinion. The first is, “What shall we add to the present course?’’ The second, “Since we are going to add to the course shall we not have to eliminate some of the facts now taught; and if so, what facts shall we eliminate?” We believe, to begin with the last question, that certain of the topics so conscientiously taught by the teacher up to the present time must be elim¬ inated. In history, for example, many topics from ancient history which now burden the curricula of some of our school systems have no legitimate place there; much from the later European history could likewise be removed without the pupil’s suffering any serious inconveniences. Much of the material that is found in the texts on American history could be omitted without any danger to the value of the course. To determine what materials should be eliminated we must appeal to our standard. The aim of the curriculum as a whole is social efficiency. The aim of a course in Ameri¬ can history is to acquaint the child with the ideals of the American people; to teach him how these ideals came to be, and how they functioned in the solution of certain prob¬ lems that arose in the life of the nation; problems of gov¬ ernment, religion, education and industries. Judging in the light of this standard we may exclude any topics of European history which do not help us to appreciate Ameri¬ can institutions, or help us understand their immediate ori¬ gin in the amount of time to be devoted to the study of his¬ tory. We may also exclude from our study the endless wars that still occupy too much of the space of some of the pres¬ ent-day histories. We should, on the other hand, include the study of some topics not now found in many of our courses. Topics from industrial history, from the history of education, from the social life of former times, would be cases in point. The child would then be given a more ac¬ curate picture of former times and would feel that the peo- 5 pie of colonial days did something besides talking politics and burning witches. In geography a similar plan should be followed. The end¬ less drills of former days on the minutiae of physical geogra¬ phy, the innumerable bays, capes, mountain peaks and cities recorded on,a map may be entitled to a place on a map—al- tho they certainly need not appear on the school map—but a knowledge of them certainly does not constitute a knowl¬ edge of geography. Neither is that kind of geographical knowledge the most important part of the subject. It is far more important for the child to know how man makes a liv¬ ing in certain of the better known regions of the world; for him to understand that certain physical conditions favor certain occupations, and that man in any region, if he is sufficiently civilized, does that thing which brings him the best income, than for him to know and to be able to repeat at will the entire list of capes and bays of the world. In language the emphasis in the past, and in many schools in the present, has been too strongly placed on the formal side of the subject. The tendency very wisely is away from the science of grammar to reading, speaking and writing the language. Much time will therefore be saved which was formerly wasted in the futile attempt to teach children of the lower grades formal grammar. In arithmetic we have begun to omit such topics as true dis¬ count, partial payments, partnership and cube root. We should incorporate more work in problems of a practical na¬ ture taken from the occupations of the children during their school hours and in some cases from outside. Manual train¬ ing, domestic science, school gardening offer a splendid op¬ portunity for problems of this kind. Even history and geog¬ raphy can be treated from the quantitative point of view much more extensively than is ordinarily done. W ith some of the obsolete materials weeded out we shall have room for those topics which conditions of today and our better understanding of child nature demand. In the light of this standard we believe that manual training, ele¬ mentary agriculture and domestic science should have a place in the elementary school curriculum; that some form of these should be given from the first grade on up through the 6 eighth grade. We believe that these occupations should be means of expression as well as means of impression; that the child should acquire certain useful information, express his thoughts in new ways, and gain control of his physical self. We believe furthermure that there should exist a close relationship between these subjects and the other subjects of the curriculum, such as history, geography and elemen¬ tary science. It is our conviction that the work in manual training should not be formal, but should center about certain prob¬ lems; that the exercises selected should be chosen because of their relation to these problems. Thus we are taking up problems arising in connection with certain of the indus¬ tries; paper making in the fifth grade, with tablet making, etc.; house construction in the sixth grade. The work in arithmetic is based upon the actual measurements in con¬ nection with the study of these and other industries of these classes. In this manner we secure an insight into the prob¬ lems of these industries, opportunities for construction work, and a thoroly concrete basis for arithmetical work; and this is probably the most that can be gotten from manu¬ al training with children of the elementary grades. For the higher grades the courses will be essentially different in content. Modern life demands that the child be acquainted with some of the elementary facts of science. The curriculum of the elementary school should therefore contain certain facts from botany, zoology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and agriculture. The course here offered should not be a dilution of the work given in similar courses in the High School and College. The elementary school is not the place in which to give extensive theories and laws, but rath¬ er those facts touching the pupiTs life now or likely to do so in the future. The facts, it seems to us, should be rep¬ resentative and should suggest the underlying principle when possible; but to insist upon the pupil's making the generalizations of the adult in the brief time at the disposal for science teaching is absurd. As far as possible, it is felt, the facts should be related to some of the children's inter¬ ests, whether these be instinctive or acquired. Thus in the 7 primary grades we may study the pets of the children teach¬ ing them their characteristics, and how to care for them; while in the higher grades the study may deal with the facts and problems suggested by the activities of the home, the farm, the community, etc., in which the child now has ac¬ quired an interest. Music and art will, of course, be given a place in the curriculum, and it is hoped that the work in these branches will be made more effective than is usually done. In both branches the pupils should reach the point where they will look upon and use them as a means of expression. Much of the work in drawing has been a mere waste of time because children have never drawn anything outside of the drawing period altho abundant opportunities have arisen in their study of literature, history, geography, science and other branches. It is hoped that both through the arrangement of the work and through the application of the curriculum this difficulty will be overcome. We believe that physical training ought to have some place in schools of today, but hold that this training should not be the formal training such as is usually given in a more or less perfunctory way by the teacher and carried out in a similar manner by the pupils. Since the school must as¬ sume responsibility for the development of the physical na¬ ture of the children there must be some provision for peri¬ odic physical examinations. The information obtained in this manner should then be used as a basis for corrective physical exercises. It is here that formal exercises of the right kind have their value; but for the best all-around de¬ velopment of normal children there is probably nothing quite so good as the spontaneous play of the children in the gymnasium or on the playground. In the higher grades may be added field and track events, basket ball and base ball. This work wisely directed, when direction is neces¬ sary, together with the physical exercise to be gotten in the manual training and school garden work, should provide for the physical development of the children. Another feature of the course of study to which we shall give attention is more consistent classification of subject matter, such as history, literature, language, etc. We be- 8 lieve that in the teaching of history, for example, there is required of the teacher a certain attitude of mind which leads her to emphasize certain features of the work; in teaching literature she has another attitude, or aim, which in this case causes her to stress certain other features, al¬ though she may have the same group of facts to deal with in the two cases. This fact should be recognized in the mak¬ ing of courses of study. There is no advantage in calling stories of mythical characters history; they are not history, and the teacher should not be compelled to call them history. If we do not wish to call them literature let us call them fiction. The course in history has suffered from this sort of thing and is filled with materials which no adult mind would accept as history. The same is true in geography in the primary grades. Here we find an aggregation of facts se¬ lected from different sciences, and for the want of another term, apparently, they are called geography. When one ex¬ amines the course, however, for the purpose of discovering the viewpoint of geography one looks in vain; the facts are treated exactly as if they were taught in connection with physics or astronomy. Would it not be better to call these facts by their right name and teach them as such rather than to confuse the teacher and in the end the children as well? Language has probably been sinned against more than either of the subjects named. After teachers began to feel that formal grammar was not suited to children of the lower grades and written and oral composition work was in¬ troduced to take the place of the former, many of them felt that an interesting content was needed for this work. Thus the study of nature, of art, of literature was taken up in the language period. The result was that language as such re¬ ceived only incidental attention and the looked-for improve¬ ment was not realized. We have now come to recognize the fact that language has a content of its own which must be emphasized; that while we may take the subject matter of other branches for composition work, if the teacher is really to secure good results she must have the viewpoint of lan¬ guage, must attend primarily to the organization of thought, to the formal elements necessary for expressing thought in best form. She must further see to it that the children 9 have this viewpoint, that they are conscious of the fact that what they are trying to do during the language period is to express their thoughts in the most effective way and in the best possible form. The subject matter of history and liter¬ ature and of science may be used in the language period, not for the purpose of discussing these subjects, however, but rather to show the children that the principles of language apply to their everyday lessons. We believe the more clear¬ ly the teacher has gotten hold of this principle the more effective will be her work. In advocating a better classification of subject matter we are not in any way opposing the idea that subjects do not become differentiated as such in the experience of the children as early as is sometimes assumed by teachers, and that for that reason the child should not be made conscious of the fact that he is being taught four or five different sub¬ jects from the beginning. The fact that the teacher knows that she is trying to teach four or five different branches does not mean that the child must know this also; the teacher may take up fifty different subjects without announcing the fact to the children whom she is teaching. What is impor¬ tant is that the children shall actually get hold of the point which the teacher is trying to teach, and this will not hap¬ pen unless the teacher is perfectly clear as to her aim. To secure the greatest economy in time and effort we shall attempt in so far as possible to apply the principle of correlation both in the arrangement of the topics and in the method of bringing them before the children. No attempt will be made, however, to apply this principle in the ex¬ treme form in which it is sometimes applied; we do not look upon it as an end but merely as a means for effective work. The order of topics in geography will be determined as far as possible by the order of those in history. Arith¬ metic will be correlated with manual training, domestic science and agriculture. Wherever history and geography can be treated in a quantitative way we shall do so. The facts taught in science will be based upon the problems of agriculture, manual training and the home experience of the children. The course is planned primarily for the children of Ox- IO ford. An attempt has therefore been made to utilize the materials at hand in such branches as history and geography. Also since the interests of this place are largely those of a farming community some emphasis will be placed upon the study of agriculture. Since the courses to be outlined will vary very material¬ ly from the courses given in the textbooks in the several branches it has been deemed advisable to plan the topics in considerable detail, thus giving the teacher that guidance necessary in uncertain places. A further reason for this de¬ tailed statement is the fact that the course will be used by the student teachers of the Normal College. A fairly com¬ plete list of references on subject matter and method will ac¬ company the topics. Whether a given course of study is carried out success¬ fully or not depends to a very great extent upon the view¬ point and skill of the teachers in charge. In order to make the course as helpful as possible along this line it is our pur¬ pose to offer enough of the methodology of each subject to enable the teacher to get the viewpoint of the framers of the course and so to have a standard of values and of emphasis. Each outline will be preceded by a statement of the purpose of the course, the points especially to be emphasized, the minimum requirements for each grade, and suggestions re¬ garding the treatment of the topics taken up. When a course of study has been planned to meet fully the needs of a certain community after all only a beginning has been made to give that community a good school; a big¬ ger element or factor than the course of study or its makers is the teacher who attempts to apply it from day to day, who gives life and soul to the dry bones. Unless there is a teacher who has the ability to get into the soul life of the child, to get his sympathy, and to take hold of him and de¬ velop in him right ways of feeling, correct sympathies, ap¬ preciation of the good and useful, and who can then form habits of action to reenforce these sympathies in critical moments; unless there is a teacher of this kind to apply the course, all the work put in the curriculum will be in vain. The great factor in the schoolroom is the teacher, and in planning the course we have attempted only to enable the ii 3 0112 05657446 good teacher to do her work better than ever before; to see more fruit from her labor because all the teachers of the corps are now working with her to gain the same goal. Whatever shall appear in the several outlines to be pub¬ lished later is material that has been tested in this and other schools, and is therefore workable. No attempt has been made to enter into the speculative fields and to offer fantas¬ tic theories which are beyond the teacher's comprehension. There is a place for experiments in connection with the work of an institution for the training of teachers, but these ex¬ periments should not constitute a recognized element of the course of study until they have passed the experimental stage. In the framing of the course of study the several depart¬ ments have been and will be freely consulted for suggestions and criticisms. With the publication of the outlines credit will be given to whom credit is due. J. W. HECKERT.