Pupil Self-Government To the Editor of Education, c/o Palmer Co., Dear Sir: Red Bank, N. J., Dec. 12, 1916. I have read Mr. Smith's article on "Pupil Self-Government" in your December number, with a great deal of pleasure. He has had some very interesting experiences. I should like to contribute the results of my own experience in the Flemington, N. J. High School, which had more than two hundred pupils. I had always believed that the finest type of discipline was liberty under control. By this I mean that sort of discipline that encourages initiative, allowing such freedom of action and thought as may be necessary for fine, round development, encouraging perfect freedom, so long as such freedom is used seriously for the general good of the mass and the individual, but with a check,-the teacher, when there is a temptation to interpret such freedom as meaning license. I had little faith in such form of government as was used in the George Junior Republic, for example. I had never been convinced that high school boys and girls had reached the age when they should be trusted to govern themselves, and much less to govern others. It seemed to me that they possessed but a small development of those traits and capacities that are necessary to the successful initiation and fulfillment of any sort of democratic government. It had never occurred to me that it was the business of the high school to help develop such traits as self-reliance, independent thinking, etc., and that the surest guarantee of the success of democratic government is the preparation of its ⚫ citizens for such government, through the development of those traits. One afternoon a few months after I had taken charge of the above school, a committee waited on me in my office. Of course I listened to what they had to say. They had come to propose to me a system of self-government, but their plans were not at all well formed. They had no notion of how the plan was to work out. They thought that I ought to tell them just what to do. They also thought that anything so simple as self-government could be put into practice immediately, and proposed that I say to the students the following Monday morning that from that time on, they were to constitute a self-governing body. Only one thing appealed to me. The students really wanted self-government, and that seemed to me the first essential of any gov ernment. Those who are to live under it must want it enough to fight to get it, and be willing to sacrifice much to retain it-- I told the committee that I was interested in what they had to present, but was not at all sure that they were ready for self-government, as they had no plan that was worth the name. If they had a plan that they could prove to me would work, they were to come back in one month to present it. In the meantime the pupils must prove to me, and to our teachers, that they were ready for such a change. As teachers, we were all skeptical, but there was such a change in the students' attitude during the following month, that our doubts changed to high hopes and we waited. On the day appointed, the committee returned with a full, well-planned scheme. It was simple at least. Very little machinery was needed in its operation. During the intervening month many student meetings had been held. I was asked to attend these, but made few recommendations except when asked to do so. My theory held that this must be purely a student movement, if it was to have deep enough roots to succeed. The governing body was to be made up of three representatives from each class, appointed by the class president. Four were to be chosen by ballot from the school at large. The principal was an ex-officio member. The body was called the Committee of Seventeen. It was the business of this committee to see that the teacher's time in the classroom was left free for teaching_only, but she was not to be deprived of the right of discipline if it were necessary at any time for her to assert herself. However, disorder in the classroom was a crime against the social unit, the school, and was to be passed on, by the Committee of Seventeen. So far as hall or study room and noon hour discipline were concerned, it was in the hands of the Committee entirely. Misconduct on the part of any student was (to be reported by the class representative. The Committee was to meet weekly, or oftener if necessary. The plan seemed good to me, and I consented to the inauguration of the new government. It is too long a story to go into the many trials and tribulations of this Committee. It is sufficient to say that for three and one-half years it was never necessary for any teacher to visit a study hall for the purpose of discipline, or to reprimand a student for disorder in halls, basement or playground. Of course, there were breaches of discipline. There are breaches of discipline every day on our streets, by those who are old enough to know better. There is bad conduct in high office in many of our states. This fact was recognized and talked about by our students, not that they might be justified, but that they might avoid such conduct in their government. It was a splendid success for the following reasons: 1. It was a student, and not a teacher, movement. 3. They were willing to sacrifice many former privileges to show the teachers and the town that they were able to set up a stable government. 4. The teachers of the High School were in full sympathy with the movement, and never interfered in any way, unless called on by the Committee to do so. I do not believe the student self-government can succeed under any other conditions. It will never be much of a success if forced on the students by the teacher body. It will never be much of a success unless the teachers have good sense, and sympathy for, and understanding of the movement. The student body need not be a picked or homogeneous class. The students of the above school were, for the most part, from fine families, but the finest chairman the Committee of Seventeen ever had was a Russian Jew, lately from the New York east side. It was a real preparation for future citizenship. Some of those. students are leaders now in the affairs of life. The realization of power came to them at the right time, and along with this there came a realization of the obligations of good citizenship. There was a great rise in student self-respect. What man does not hold up his head with pride, if he is a man of his own affairs, and has a clean record? There was real freedom under control, because the control was of the right kind, and it was self-imposed. The severest punishment for any student by the Committee was to deprive him of his part in the affairs of the body politic. Lastly, two or three teachers were left free every period of the day for conference in their own classrooms. They were relieved of the strain of study hall duty, etc., and gave their time to the pupil who needed it most. I am sending this communication with the feeling that it might be of interest to you. I should be glad to have you publish it if you care to do so. If not, I shall not be in any sense offended. I have read your magazine for many years, and have felt many times that I should like to contribute something to its success. Sincerely yours, PAUL R. RADCLIFFE. American Notes-Editorial Why the teacher? The question sounds primeval and simple; but the reasons for things that have become customary have to be restated once in a while, in the interests of clear thinking and efficient practice. It is to be feared that too many estimable young people drift into the great stream of candidates for teaching positions, coming from the colleges and normal schools without any adequate conception of why they should give themselves to this kind. of work, beyond the mere necessity of doing something to make a living or to tide them over in a respectable occupation until the opportunity offers for them to be married. It is unfortunate that so important and so serious a calling should ever be used as a makeshift. It should be as sacred and be taken as seriously as the ministry or as maternity. The reason for the teacher's calling is found in the necessity, in a complex state of civilization, for a division of labor. Naturally we should expect the parents to be the teachers of their children. Such is the case in the brute world and in the lower stages of human civilization. But as life grows more complex, the activities of communities, of necessity become specialized. The child's maintenance, the home he abides in, the food that nourishes him, his clothing, and his general social environment and training occupy the entire time and energy of his parents, from the moment of his pre-natal existence, to the hour of his maturity and independence. Meanwhile the great body of accumulated knowledge and experience, gathered by countless millions of human beings down through the ages, has become so vast that to make it available to the individual, necessitates trained bodies of specialists, who, with all their time and with all their energy shall appropriate from this vast storehouse the most important and necessary things, and who shall study profoundly the best methods of transmitting them to the successive oncoming generations. In this great sub-division of labors, it would be hard to say which is the more important, the work of parentage or the work of education, the work of the father and mother or the work of the teacher. Both are essential to the maintenance and welfare of the Both are so great as to be mutually exclusive. Ordinarily the teacher must remain single while she teaches; and the mother must delegate the teaching function mainly to the teacher. race. Some important facts follow from the main idea presented in the above paragraph. For one thing, it should become clear to the thinking person that the teacher is worthy of his or her hire. A more liberal estimate should be made of the value of the teacher's services. These services should command a better price than the mean and niggardly sum that is so often voted at the town meeting or by the city government for the all-essential labors of those who are doing the work of education, which has been delegated to them by the parents who are unable to do it themselves. Work of other kinds that must be done, usually commands its price. The more difficult and costly the preparation, the higher the price! To become a good teacher requires years of preparation; and, as above indicated, not infrequently the permanent renunciation of some of the fondest ambitions of the normal woman. The reward should be more commensurate with the sacrifice. We believe that we shall come to see this matter in its true light and not only increase the wages, but also lessen the labors of the individual teacher by giving her fewer pupils, to whom she can give more individual attention, thus greatly increasing the efficiency of her teaching. Let us do all that we can to create an enlightened and liberal public sentiment along these lines. Still another deduction from our main premise is that the citizens who vote the money and pay the bills have a right to expect that the teachers shall really succeed in educating the children,-the dull and slow ones as well as those who are quick and bright. There is a tendency in many schools to be satisfied with the attainments of the best scholars, to put them forward, show them off, and base upon them the reputation of the school for success; while the backward children, who are most in need of help, are passed by, put back at the end of the year to do the work over again, and sometimes thrown out altogether, or made so uncomfortable that to save their being ruined, their parents are obliged to take them out and send them to private schools or tutors, where they will get the individual attention which they need. When we pay the teachers as they should be paid, and when we cease overcrowding the schools with so many children that proper attention to the individual child is impossible, then, and we fear not until then, can we "put it up to" the schools that it is their fault and theirs alone, if our child fails of promotion at the end of the year. In line with the sentiments of the above paragraphs, we call our readers' particular attention to the "Teacher's Prayer" to which we have given the first page of this number of Education. We believe that every father or mother who reads this beautiful prayer will instinctively say in his or her heart, if not with the lips, "that is the way I want my children's teacher to feel and pray!" |