The Teaching of Thrift in Schools

THOMAS ALEXANDER BAGGS, M. A., PHILADELPHIA, PA.

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O more significant movement has arisen in America during the last year than the nation-wide campaign for thrift. The movement has proved successful because timely, and because it has enjoyed the active co-operation of the schools, the press and pulpit of the country.

American schools have played a conspicuous part in the present endeavor to focus national attention on thrift. February 3rd, 1916, was declared national THRIFT DAY and far and wide in every state of the Union the day was enthusiastically celebrated. In the various schools special addresses and lectures were given; special prizes for essays on thrift were offered. The meaning of thrift, its objects and benefits, was explained to school children and through them to many more parents and adults. Similar exercises were held February 3rd, 1917 and will be on each succeeding annual THRIFT DAY.

There can be no doubt in the minds of clear-thinking Americans as to the imperative necessity of thrift. Thanks to opportunities afforded by the war, we are today the most prosperous nation in the world, and, among certain very large classes of the nation, probably the most reckless of expenditure. Thrift under such conditions is a hard-learned lesson. We are learning it-slowly. And in this, the schools of America have been and may be still further the means of rapid and efficient instruction.

Thrift lends itself readily to practical demonstration in the schoolroom. It is so essentially a part of successful living that its ramifications are discoverable under almost every head of the curriculum. The three R's, history, geography, literature, nature study and manual work are indeed but a few of the subjects with which thrift may be correlated. And in the institution of the school savings bank is a permanent object lesson working out directly under the eyes of each pupil.

For some very cogent reason, American schools have not been

so progressive as one would expect in this matter of teaching thrift to children. There has been in many schedules a weekly lesson on thrift, but few specific efforts to teach thrift in the only workmanlike manner, i. e., indirectly and correlatively. Educators have long since been agreed as to the failure of the direct method of moral instruction. Too many children can parrot and indite beautiful essays on cleanliness with fingers ink-stained and grimy; too many scholars write prose-poems on thrift and squander pennies in candy with most matter-of-fact indifference.

This remissness is further reflected in America's tardiness to adopt the institution of school savings banks. It is only within recent years that the school savings bank plan has made any headway and even that has been grudgingly conceded. Plainly, the conception of thrift among our teachers and instructors is not an acceptable one and in this manner of thinking, the schools are in accordance with the nation.

In the days of Benjamin Franklin, thrift was a vital force. Fortune smiled upon us and the virtue fell into disfavor. Prosperity inevitably begets extravagance. As Bacon expressed it: "Prosperity doth best discover vice; adversity doth best discover virtue." Small wonder today, when swollen and flushed with war profits, that the American people have little patience with thrift. And it is therefore not surprising that American school administration has been tardy to endorse instruction in thrift and to stimulate its practice by providing and encouraging school savings institutions.

Leaner years and harder conditions made thrift a necessity in Europe-a fact to which bear witness the majority of our foreignborn citizens. It was Germany, the founder of savings banks who established the first school savings bank in 1820 at Gozlar, a small mining town in the Harz Mountains. The idea was adopted by France in 1834, by Belgium in 1866, and later by Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and England. In these countries, particularly in France and Belgium, the school savings bank is a recognized educational institution.

In America, school savings banks were first introduced in 1885, when Mr. J. H. Thiry adapted the European system for use in the public schools of Long Island City, New York. Progress has

been slow and steady. At the end of 1909, there were 108 cities in the United States with school savings banks.

America will continue unthrifty so long as our educators delay the general establishment of school savings banks. Said Humboldt: "Whatever we wish to see introduced in the life of a nation must be first introduced into its schools." Few will deny the indispensability of thrift as a factor in continuous national greatness. It is no hyperbole to say that the future greatness of America is indissolubly connected with the teaching and promotion of thrift in our schools.

Testimony is abundant in cities with school savings banks as to their beneficial influence on scholars and even parents. Children learn the value of thrift from its practice among their playfellows and are quick to go and do likewise. According to teachers' reports, the thrift habit is easily acquired after such an object lesson, and, once acquired, it is seldom discarded. Among boys, the school savings bank habit tends to reduce smoking, gambling and other pernicious indulgences. Children become less and less disposed to spill pennies on candies and confectioneries. It is not an uncommon experience for candy and confectionery stores in the neighborhood of schools to go completely out of business when the school savings bank system is adopted.

The great virtue of this method of inculcating thrift is that the child does not rely solely on precept. Here precisely is the teacher's opportunity. The school savings bank may be used to excellent advantage to further the indirect thrift teaching af forded by other lessons in the curriculum. The teaching of thrift in arithmetic lessons devoted, say to compound and simple interest, in bookkeeping lessons and other commercial courses, is obviously inherent, and thrift for the child is no longer an abstract noun but a vital force whose value and utility are practically demonstrated.

The business of conducting a school savings bank, further, can give scholars a real insight into business methods. In one school in the middle west, the children themselves take complete charge on Savings Day, which occurs once a week. On that day the children appoint a receiving teller who enters all deposits in ledger and pass-books; a paying teller who makes payment after

careful scrutiny of withdrawal forms; a special messenger who takes receipts to the school director by whom in turn they are sent to the bank. Such procedure, coupled with intelligent discussion in class of the various terms of financial phraseology gives children an unquestionably better understanding of money and its uses.

But the real and most significant of the many benefits of the school savings bank system is the subconscious, unobstrusive habituation to thrift. The saving habit grows upon the child and continues in the adult. Children rise to a true conception of thrift as not meanness, but management in affairs of time, energy, health, as well as money. That the child depositor in the school savings bank becomes the father of the thrifty man is the universal testimony. It has been computed that in Germany more than three-fourths of existing savings bank deposits result from school savings banks-this in a country whose average of depositors is considerably higher than most nations. The thoughts of youth, sings the poet, are long, long thoughts: the habits of youth are strong, strong habits. The habit of thrift implanted in youth is incradicable. Thrift in a nation bespeaks progress; it means a wiser, more efficient and characterful citizenry recognizing and cheerfully performing its duties to itself, its neighbors and the state.

"The aim of education," the learned Doctor James Ward puts it, "is efficiency for the highest life." This aim, the teaching of thrift by practical methods, directly promotes, for thrift in the final analysis is the highest notch of efficiency. Let us strive, one and all, for greater efficiency in the teaching of this efficiency. Its achievement is indispensable to the safety, honor and welfare of the nation.

Some Opportunities That Come to Country

School Masters

GAREY C. MYERS, PH. D., BROOKLYN TRAINING SCHOOL
FOR TEACHERS.

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HE problem of the rural school is now among the foremost, on the tongue and pen of pedagogues. This problem is of vital interest to the writer for he once was pupil, then schoolmaster, in a good old fashioned country school. Since then the country school has gradually advanced; but it still bids fair to offer to the fervent conscientious ☎ schoolman a lot of opportunities which, it seems, not many teachers of the country school have grasped.

In one particular the teacher in the district school has failed most fatally, that is, to lead the country child to have a healthy attitude toward country folk and life and places. First of all the text-book is a handicap. The average book from which the country child gets most of what he learns at school, was written by a city schoolman, with the city child in view. The illustrations are most suited to the city child, and the wealth and splendor of the city and the town are magnified. The poverty and sufferings attending city life, on the other hand, are rarely noted, while the wealth and beauty, health and freedom of the country scarcely get a mention. In consequence, many country lads and lassies long to see the wealth and wonders of the "promised land," the city.

To face this problem fairly, the teacher needs to have a genuine appreciation of the country. He needs to know it, to understand its difficulties and to recognize its unworked wealth. He should know what makes, a farmer prosper and what makes him poor. He should be familiar with the most up-to-date principles of home hygiene, advanced practices in domestic science and economy, scientific farming, gardening, fruit growing, stock and