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DIAGRAM 2.-Showing the percentage of the total population enrolled in the common schools

by years since 1870-71.

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10

20

30

40

90

100

110

1120

130

DIAGRAM 3.-Showing t e average number of days the schools were kept each year since

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DIAGRAM 4.-Showing the amount expended per capita of population each year since 1870-71.

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CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS.

According to the Eleventh Census, between 1880 and 1890 there was an annual increase of 2.2 per cent in the population of the United States as a whole, while the cities grew more rapidly, attaining the rate of 4.8 per cent per annum. This gain on the part of the cities has a significance in educational affairs; the problems of city school organization and management are the most important with which we have to deal.

The statistics of enrollment presented in this report (Chapter XXXVI) show that there has been no change in the tendency of urban growth since 1890, for while the school enroll

ment in the country at large shows an average annual growth of 2.1 per cent, the city schools have grown at the rate of 5.8 per cent; 24.2 per cent of the entire enrollment is in cities of over 8,000 inhabitants, as against 20.1 per cent in 1891.

1870-71

22.1 CENTS

20

15

10

5 CENTS

1879-80

17.9 CENTS

1889-90

21.6 CENTS

Naturally during such rapid expansion the question of organization becomes of prime importance. The actual instruction given is the ultimate objective point toward which all questions of organization must look. All discussion that relates to school boards, supervision, equipment, cost, and such items must have as its final object the efficiency of the teacher and of his work. But the question of maintaining and improving the quality of the teaching has become exceedingly complex as cities have grown in size, and many subsidiary questions are involved that have caused so much difficulty in their settlement that they have come to be looked upon as no longer of secondary consideration, but matters of prime importance in themselves. The selection of members of the school board, the raising of school revenue, the appointment of the superintendent, the choice of teachers, the construction of buildings, all these involve vital questions, the successful solution of which is the condition precedent upon which effective work in the school depends.

on

DIAGRAM 5.-Showing the
amount expended
the common schools for
each $100 of the true
valuation of all real and
personal property.

The size of schoolrooms as affecting discipline.-One of the items of school management which came under the notice of the earliest supervisors of city schools was the size of the room and number of pupils assigned to the charge of the teacher. The Bell and Lancaster system of monitorial education had brought into use in the cities of the North Atlantic States the plan of school building that furnished a large assembly room in which the pupils sat while engaged in their studies. The head master presided over this room and "kept order." The general

exercises also were held in this room, but for the majority of recitations the pupils passed into small adjoining rooms, presided over by assist ant teachers. In the Lancasterian or monitorial system these assistants were pupil teachers.

The first departure from this style of building seems to have been the Quincy School in Boston, completed in 1847 and placed under the charge of John D. Philbrick, who became afterwards distinguished as the superintendent of the Boston schools and an eminent authority in American education.

The best building for the graded school, officered by professionally trained teachers, was then and there discovered. It furnished the model for the school buildings in the cities of the Northwestern States. Primary pupils and grammar pupils were collected in one building.'

Instead of a large study room, with small recitation rooms opening out from it, in the Quincy School there were twelve separate rooms intended to be occupied each by a single teacher, who was to have charge of the discipline of the pupils while studying, as well as of the classes when reciting.

This point in regard to architecture is by all means the most important item in the whole plan of organization. Instead of a small room, 28 by 32 feet and holding 56 pupils, make a large room holding 150 pupils and the entire morale of the school will be changed. While a humane, self controlled teacher can easily manage the small room and secure excellent discipline with very little or no corporal punishment, it requires a person of strong gifts in the direction of discipline-so strong, indeed, as to overbalance his other qualities-to control and discipline the large room. The tendency of the school system with the large room is constantly toward the employment of bullies and tyrants as head masters. The influence of the whole school then goes toward military discipline sustained by brute force. In the St. Louis schools in 1858, where the large-room plan prevailed, it was not uncommon for over 100 cases of corporal punishment to take place in one day in a school building containing less than 500 pupils.

The pupils in the small rooms remain under the discipline of the same teacher, both in recitation and in study, and teacher and pupil come to know each other and to feel an intimate sympathy, whereas in the large-room system the number of pupils prevents intimate acquaintance on the part of the head master, who is responsible for the discipline. The constant danger of demoralization renders summary. measures indispensable. Every case of misbehavior attracts the attention of 150 pupils. The teacher can have very little power to hold so many pupils in subordination by the influence of his eye and voice. In the small room a case of misbehavior disturbs only 50 pupils, and the

I quote here a discussion of the meaning of this departure in school architecture from my contribution to the volume, A Memorial of the Life and Services of John D. Philbrick. Boston. New England Publishing Company, 1887.

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