David Spence Mill 
 
 Significant 
 
 Problems of Education 
 
[Reprinted from School and Society, Vol. IV., No. 
 84, Pages 197-203, August 5, 1916] 
 
 SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS OF EDUCA- 
 TION IN NEW ORLEANS 1 
 
 I. EDUCATION THE ETERNAL QUESTION 
 
 One benefit of the Public School Alliance 
 is that as citizens, rather than as school 
 officials or persons representing any one 
 interest, we are encouraged to discuss 
 candidly and openly many vital, questions 
 — the eternal question being the problem of 
 human education. The building of levees 
 and sewers, the improvement of streets, the 
 systematic advertisement of our advantages 
 for trade and manufacturing and that ab- 
 sorbing, periodical activity, the election of 
 a governor or legislators — all these are 
 matters necessarily in the attention of good 
 citizens. But this fact can not be refuted : 
 We shall never have the best levees, the best 
 obtainable public improvements, adequate 
 trade and manufacturing or the highest 
 type of officials in Louisiana until we are 
 more successful than we have been in solv- 
 ing the problem of education. Education 
 is that organized effort we are making by 
 means of the public school to change boys 
 and girls into efficient men and women — 
 citizens who are able to support themselves 
 by intelligent work, healthy citizens who 
 are law abiding and moral, citizens who 
 desire as individuals to make a contribu- 
 tion to the sum total of human happiness 
 and who are able individually to appre- 
 
 i An address before the Public School Alliance, 
 November 6, 1916. 
 
2 
 
 ciate some of the good things of life — the 
 beautiful, the good, the true. To develop 
 this type of citizen is the fundamental prob- 
 lem of education. The public schools of 
 America are struggling with it as it affects 
 twenty millions of children; we in New 
 Orleans are charged with this most difficult 
 of human tasks as it affects forty thousand 
 boys and girls to-day and untold multitudes 
 of children of to-morrow, for our two-score 
 thousands now living are but a handful in 
 comparison with those yet to he born. 
 
 II. ALL CITIZENS SHOULD KNOW THE SCHOOLS 
 
 The public schools belong to the people. 
 They should represent the best aspirations 
 and unselfish efforts of the citizens of a 
 democracy. The public schools should not 
 he dominated by any political clique, sec- 
 tarian influence or individual interest. 
 School boards and officials and teachers 
 hear a heavy and not always appreciated 
 burden of responsibility. But the schools 
 do not belong to boards, officials or teach- 
 ers ; they belong to all of the people. 
 
 The perpetuity in peace of civilization, 
 the conquest of disease, freedom from 
 superstition, the development of invention, 
 industry and agriculture — all these depend 
 upon the type of education we maintain. 
 This movement of the Public School Alli- 
 ance to foster intelligent discussion of the 
 questions of public education and to inter- 
 est actively a more numerous body of our 
 strongest citizens in affairs of the public 
 school, is a significant step. It is not 
 enough for the same small group of enthu- 
 siasts to meet month after month in this 
 Alliance. The great human problem at 
 hand is worthy of the thought of every 
 
) G JQ \ 7 6 -, hi . 
 
 3 
 
 }\ 5 5 ■A' 
 
 man and woman of our city. It seems that 
 we are able frequently to secure concerted 
 action in behalf of every issue except the 
 schools. Political meetings, at best of 
 ephemeral interest, carnivals, balls, prize 
 fights, races, commercial congresses, each 
 have their crowds. It is perhaps the fault 
 of educators that the whole splendid energy 
 of our people has not been directed more 
 persistently into activities as prompt and 
 whole-hearted, for the schools. The major- 
 ity of our ablest men and women should 
 give vigilance, cooperation and support in 
 behalf of our public schools in which we 
 have invested millions of dollars and at 
 present invest the lives of hundreds of 
 teachers and two-score thousand of chil- 
 dren. We have too freely turned over to 
 officials, to school employees and to teach- 
 ers, and perhaps also to a few self-appointed 
 reformers, the burden of this greatest hu- 
 man undertaking in its manifold phases. 
 
 in. TRAINED EDUCATORS ARE IN DEMAND 
 
 The fundamental educational problem, 
 amid the intricacies of a public-school sys- 
 tem comprising nearly a hundred schools, 
 is to secure the services of trained, honest 
 officials, teachers and employees. Espe- 
 cially is specific training in education to be 
 demanded of principals, supervisors and 
 superintendents of to-morrow. In a dozen 
 American cities to-day there is confusion, 
 waste and failure to serve the best interests 
 of the children, largely because of the in- 
 competency of past captains of education. 
 
 There are principles and arts known and 
 best practised respectively by surgeons and 
 engineers, and to-day special and pro- 
 
4 
 
 longed training in professional courses de- 
 signed for surgeons or for engineers is 
 being exacted of the practitioner and of the 
 engineers. Until recently we have felt that 
 to be an educational practitioner, dealing 
 with the questions of’ a school system, re- 
 quired little professional training. Pop- 
 ularity, perhaps mere common sense, even 
 political or personal influence without indi- 
 vidual ability — these have been the sole 
 criteria of persons in charge of American 
 educational institutions, time and again. 
 Communities and alumni of to-day, how- 
 ever, are not easily deceived and leaders 
 are sought who combine executive qualities 
 with technical knowledge in pedagogy 
 equivalent to the equipment of the skilled 
 surgeon or of the skilled engineer in their 
 own fields. The number of such educators 
 is multiplying with the establishment of 
 schools of education in the best universities 
 of the country — greatly to the discomfiture 
 of the pedagogues whose chief asset for 
 preferment in public or private education 
 is sheer wire-pulling ability and the sup- 
 port of cliques and factions, whether polit- 
 ical or social. The vigilance and action of 
 the public mind can see to it that, more and 
 more, our schools should be entrusted only 
 to men and women of the best obtainable 
 type of professional preparation, as well as 
 personal fitness. Back of the quick, simple 
 movements of the surgeon’s art, are vast 
 sciences such as physiology, bacteriology, 
 chemistry. In the background of the edu- 
 cator who solves the educational problem 
 for increasing thousands, there must be 
 familiarity with education as a science. A 
 long, vague experience within the school- 
 room is no substitute for special, profes- 
 
5 
 
 sional training of educators. Schoolroom 
 and experience alone may distort narrow, 
 rather than rectify and broaden our view 
 of' the world in relation to the school. 
 
 IV. EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE 
 
 A reference to the meaning and sub- 
 divisions of pedagogy as a science will 
 therefore prepare us better to recognize, 
 classify and to seek solutions of our local 
 educational problems. It is well to observe 
 that by science we mean any large body of 
 facts systematized, based upon careful ob- 
 servation or experiment. There are recog- 
 nized many such bodies of facts about edu- 
 cation, which facts constitute educational 
 science. For example, there are the History 
 of Education, School Hygiene, Educational 
 Psychology. 
 
 In the History of Education are available 
 the record of the pioneers in education, 
 their devices, failures and successes in deal- 
 ing with the persistent questions of the de- 
 velopment of childhood and youth. Scholars 
 have laid before us the record of primitive 
 peoples, of China, Greece, Rome, the 
 Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reforma- 
 tion, the Naturalistic, Disciplinary, Psycho- 
 logical and Sociological Movements in edu- 
 cation. Resplendent here are the names of 
 famous men who anticipated and exploded 
 centuries ago some of the “new” inven- 
 tions for the school now exploited among 
 us — men such as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, 
 Hillel, Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, 
 Froebel, Vittorino, Locke and Mann. Fool- 
 ish is the modern educational reformer 
 who does not profit by the experience of 
 other men thus made accessible. 
 
6 
 
 School Hygiene as a department of edu- 
 cational science fills volumes of carefully 
 written books. It means far more than 
 diluted lessons on physiology, or admoni- 
 tions about fresh air and the common drink- 
 ing cup. With regard to the conservation 
 of the health and the promotion of success- 
 ful, happy work of pupils and teachers, 
 school hygiene by careful experimentation 
 has worked out a hundred details of school 
 practise. For example: Location and con- 
 struction of buildings, details about eye- 
 saving illumination, appraisement of the 
 various systems of heating and of ventila- 
 tion, specifications of school desks and 
 furniture that do not favor spinal distor- 
 tions, and the right kind of playgrounds, 
 the best systems of medical inspection to 
 prevent the spread of disease and to detect 
 remediable physical defects, provisions for 
 the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the speech 
 defective. 
 
 Educational Psychology garners for prac- 
 tical use the known facts about instinct, 
 habit, memory, attention, the learning proc- 
 esses, fatigue and other aspects of the hu- 
 man mind. Psychology is no longer bare 
 metaphysics or phrenology or superstition. 
 An enlarging body of facts gathered by 
 honest observation and experiment is being 
 gradually applied to the improvement of 
 courses of study, methods of instruction, 
 regulation of hours and the control of habit 
 formation. 
 
 It can be understood that a teacher will 
 have a different attitude who approaches 
 his or her tasks, not only with a knowledge 
 of his subject, be it arithmetic, algebra, 
 drawing, Latin or manual training, but also 
 
7 
 
 with a background of knowledge of the 
 educational sciences we have illustrated. 
 That teacher will not resent every effort at 
 change, that teacher will be more interested 
 in the child, the pupil, than in the text-book 
 or grade work. 
 
 V. NO CURE-ALL IN EDUCATION 
 
 Having in mind all of this background 
 of world experience in education and scien- 
 tific method of attack upon educational 
 problems, we find there are no ready-made 
 formulas, recipes or remedies for educa- 
 tional troubles. Each problem is a situa- 
 tion that requires trained leadership on the 
 one hand and the support of an awakening 
 public on the other. There is a distinction 
 between the province of the citizen and mem- 
 ber of this Alliance who has a right to in- 
 form himself and to demand results of 
 teachers and officials, and the province of 
 the trained educator whose business it is 
 to know the problem and to work out the 
 details of school practise. When there is 
 secured in New Orleans a complete under- 
 standing of the professional nature of effi- 
 cient school work, we shall then find a large 
 group of problems challenging cooperation 
 and knowledge and action upon the part 
 both of school officials and of citizens. 
 
 VI. GRATIFYING PROGRESS — SHOALS AHEAD 
 
 It is indisputable that in many directions 
 our public schools have exhibited growth 
 and improvement during the past five 
 years. It is a delusion, however, for any 
 one to believe that the present situation is 
 not full of dangers that to be avoided de- 
 mand rare skill, patience and devotion to 
 
8 
 
 the cause of the children. If in the pre- 
 ceding lines we have outlined the field of 
 educational science, then the following 
 typical problems or questions indicate the 
 wide scope of the art of education. The 
 administrator or teacher who must meet 
 these problems needs all available science, 
 courage, practical experience, tact and hu- 
 man sympathy. Let us enumerate nine of 
 these problems that are vital to the future 
 of New Orleans’ schools. This short list, 
 it is hoped, will be fruitful in suggesting to 
 the Alliance and to the public, important, 
 live topics as themes for study and bene- 
 ficial discussion as between school men and 
 citizens dneply interested in education. 
 This list of typical problems confronts a 
 school board and superintendent already 
 overburdened with a multitude of school 
 affairs. The number of the problems in- 
 creases beyond the knowledge of the aver- 
 age citizen or teacher. A consideration of 
 such typical problems may enlist in the 
 public better understanding and coopera- 
 tion with the school officials and teachers. 
 It should be especially profitable to the per- 
 son who with little professional prepara- 
 tion nevertheless is prone to present per- 
 sistently his or her one aim as the greatest 
 panacea for the ills of the school system. 
 
 VII. NINE TYPICAL EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS 
 IN NEW ORLEANS 
 
 1. Finance . — How under existing laws, 
 or laws yet to be formulated, may our 
 schools be supplied with funds in order to 
 meet, without expensive loans, the neces- 
 sary demands for buildings, equipment, 
 maintenance, supervision and the adequate 
 pay of teachers? 
 
9 
 
 2. Election of School Boards . — The new 
 law makes it possible to secure a non-parti- 
 san school board. The provisions of the 
 new law teem both with splendid possibil- 
 ities and with grave dangers. Practi- 
 cally any man securing a hundred proper 
 signatures may become a candidate before 
 the people for the new school board. The 
 problem is, how may citizens be aroused in 
 all the future to the selection of a high-class 
 group of men, representing in themselves 
 chiefly character, education and business 
 ability and themselves deeply loyal to the 
 public schools? 
 
 3. Organization of School Administra- 
 tion . — Future boards may have in their 
 power the reorganization of the adminis- 
 tration of the work of school officials. The 
 affairs of medical inspection, compulsory 
 attendance, research, bookkeeping and ac- 
 counting, the purchase and delivery of sup- 
 plies — each requires different, responsible 
 directors. How can all of this work, at 
 bottom related, be done with best results? 
 To have different departments and divi- 
 sions reporting directly to the board, or de- 
 partments to committees of the board, or 
 departments answerable to the superin- 
 tendent as representative of the board and 
 in the minds of the people the responsible 
 head of the school system ? 
 
 4. Organization of System of Instruction. 
 — In comparison with the deficient system 
 in New Orleans of ten years ago, we are 
 now maintaining a splendid school system 
 comprising kindergartens, eight elementary 
 grades, night schools, certain special classes, 
 the Nicholls Industrial School, three high 
 schools and a jhormal school. But the 
 lowest grades of the elementary schools are 
 
10 
 
 crowded with little pupils, while the eighth 
 grade contains an appallingly small number 
 of pupils. Boys especially are leaving the 
 schools. In the high schools there are scores 
 of classes or divisions that report in each 
 only from six to twenty-five students. 
 Other high-school classes report more than 
 a hundred students. How can we reorgan- 
 ize equitably our whole system of instruc- 
 tion in order to give a more equitable divi- 
 sion of work and more care to the young 
 children whose years are the prime of op- 
 portunity? Shall we or shall we not have 
 junior high schools? Shall we or shall we 
 not drop the eighth grade, as Kansas City 
 did years ago? How can the superintend- 
 ents be aided in the practical question of 
 relocating teachers if such radical steps or 
 reorganization be undertaken in order to 
 lessen the unbalanced condition observed 
 throughout the system? 
 
 5. Repeaters . — More than four thousand 
 school children doing again the work of 
 certain grades are a problem now giving 
 grave concern to the superintendent, the 
 principals and teachers. Hundreds of these 
 children are doing the work of a grade 
 for the second or third time, some for the 
 fourth. How can these numbers of chil- 
 dren being trained to the habit of failure 
 be diminished? How can work hours and 
 methods be modified to lessen the evil and 
 yet to maintain the strength of our courses 
 of study? 
 
 6. Elimination . — Hundreds of white boys 
 and girls drop out of school at fourteen 
 years of age and not all of them drop out 
 through economic necessity. If the negroes 
 dropping out of school were forced to at- 
 tend, there are not school houses sufficient 
 
11 
 
 to accommodate them. Elimination from 
 school is an evil in our midst, related to 
 idleness, vice and child labor. The best of 
 schools can not succeed unless first the 
 children are there. The stay-in-school cam- 
 paign last year engineered by Superintend- 
 ent Gwinn had favorable influence upon 
 school attendance. In addition to our pres- 
 ent efforts to use moral suasion and to en- 
 force the compulsory attendance law, how 
 can the home, the school, and officers of the 
 law further cooperate in lessening the evil 
 of elimination? 
 
 7. Vocational Education . — Preliminary 
 training of boys and young men toward the 
 mechanical trades is a point of long-con- 
 tinued omission in New Orleans. A survey 
 of industries and occupations has been 
 made and deduced therefrom, there is a 
 working plan for the entire Delgado Cen- 
 tral Trades School for Boys. The working 
 plan covers details of administrative con- 
 trol, organization of courses, requirements 
 of structures and shops and equipment and 
 of location. The money is available for the 
 establishment of the Delgado School, but 
 not for the maintenance. A problem is, 
 how can this crying need be met? Are 
 there any expenditures which might be 
 shifted to the maintenance of the Delgado 
 School? Is there any good method of 
 finance by which the money can be ob- 
 tained? There is no class of persons more 
 neglected in this city than the hundreds of 
 young boys who leave the schools early and 
 must learn to work for their living. 
 
 8. Provisions for Exceptional Children. 
 — The superintendent of schools has re- 
 peatedly called attention to the need of 
 
12 
 
 provision in this community for certain 
 types of exceptional children. The Alli- 
 ance several years ago published a report 
 to the same end, and the writer has con- 
 ducted researches upon groups and indi- 
 viduals that point vividly to this need. An 
 influential member of the school board has 
 often spoken to the writer of the great need 
 for provision for the exceptional child in 
 the school and laments the lack of funds 
 that makes special provision difficult at this 
 time. There are several score of positively 
 feeble-minded children in our schools ; 
 they do not progress, they hinder other 
 children and are a burden to teachers. Fre- 
 quently such children are brought for 
 study by distracted parents to the psycho- 
 logical clinic of the public schools. In our 
 psychological clinic, our one class for back- 
 ward children, our school for the deaf and 
 in the Waifs’ Home, we have made only^a 
 bare beginning in protecting, training and 
 segregating children who, for their own 
 sake and for the community’s, need special 
 protection. Plans suggesting suitable or- 
 ganization of classes and schools in con- 
 structive cooperation with existing agencies 
 have been drawn. How can money, inter- 
 est and trained workers for this neglected 
 undertaking in Louisiana be obtained? 
 
 9. How Can Educational Research be 
 made effective ? — Exhaustive efforts have 
 been made to ascertain the truth about 
 many of our problems. The present school 
 board has become favorably known over 
 the country for its support of educational 
 research. Eecently many published reports 
 in New Orleans have been made, such as 
 follow: (1) Concerning industries and 
 
13 
 
 mechanical occupations; (2) vocations and 
 night-school work; (3) statistical measures 
 of thirty thousand children which show 
 relative progress of over-age and at-age 
 groups and repeaters in each grade of 
 every public school; (4) delinquent boys 
 and ameliorative measures; (5) the status 
 and causes of elimination; and (6) many 
 reports on individual eases of exceptional 
 children. Two special educational prob- 
 lems now are, first, to secure thoughtful 
 consideration by citizens of the facts ascer- 
 tained and, second, to secure vigorous 
 action where the facts of the reports war- 
 rant change. Otherwise, we shall revert to 
 the primitive method of substituting prej- 
 udice for truth, opinions for measurements 
 — a practise recognized as dangerous in 
 every practical art other than education. 
 
 VIII. OPEN-MINDEDNESS, NOT BLIND PARTISAN- 
 SHIP, TO SOLVE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Fair consideration of groups of such 
 problems as these in their relative propor- 
 tions is better for education than the ag- 
 gressive promotion of some hobby. To 
 unite men at their best moments regardless 
 of party, clique or sect, to consider each of 
 these problems as concerning the children, 
 and not primarily job-holders or job- 
 seekers, would be a superb accomplishment 
 of parents’ clubs, teachers’ associations, 
 civic organizations and of this Alliance. 
 This kind of effort would be more profitable 
 to New Orleans than the repeated passing 
 of resolutions or the heckling of the school 
 board which are not unknown in our midst. 
 The present effort of the Public School Alli- 
 ance by inaugurating a series of public dis- 
 
14 
 
 cussions concerning education, if these dis- 
 cussions are to be conducted ably, fairly 
 and in a thoroughgoing constructive spirit, 
 will meet with the commendation of all 
 good citizens. 
 
 David Spence Hill, 
 
 Director 
 
 Division of Educational Research of the 
 Public Schools, 
 
 New Orleans, La. 
 
PRE 
 
 'ai. Enrolment 
 
 lSS A 
 
 seble-minded, unfitted 
 for public schools 
 
 tSS B 
 
 jickward children, re- 
 quiring special class, 
 within public schools 
 
 ISS C 
 
 cceptionally able or 
 gifted children 
 
 |SS D 
 
 I :orrigible, habitually 
 I vicious children 
 
 | 
 
 i. Apparently 
 of defective 
 mentality 
 
 2. Apparently 
 of normal 
 mentality 
 
 
 s 
 
 Defective 
 
 vision 
 
 2. Deaf and 
 
 ! 
 
 co «— O 
 
 Boys 
 
 141 
 
 354 
 
 26 
 
 34 
 
 303 
 
 
 445 
 
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 248 
 
 337 
 
 Girls 
 
 131 
 
 
 357 
 
 576 
 
 
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 642 
 
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 Boys 
 
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 Girls 
 
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 Boys 
 
 11 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 
 37 
 
 
 3 
 
 46 
 
 Girls 
 
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 31 
 
 20 
 
 
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 51 
 
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 30 
 
 Boys 
 
 
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 Girls 
 
 
 
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 Boys 
 
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 F. T. Howard No. 
 
OF NEW ORLEANS 
 
 PRELIMINARY CENSUS OF EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN, elementary public schools 
 
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