Charles H. Judd

The School and the Library

It gives me great pleasure to appear before this gathering as the representative of the National Education Association. I do not know what qualifications are ordinarily sought in such a representative, but I judge that two are at least permitted. First, one must be unable to attend the meetings of the National Education Association itself, because it is so far away; and second, one must be supplied with a liberal lack of knowledge of library science. Whatever the qualifications of the representative it is an easy task to say to the Library Association that there is a close bond connection and sympathy between the two associations. We who teach cannot do the work of the schools without recognizing our dependence -on the work that is being done in the community by the library; and I venture to assume that you feel the reciprocal relations yourselves and recognize the importance of a good school in a ,city where you conduct a good library. If I make an effort to comment in any wise upon library matters I shall have to confine myself to those aspects of library work which have to do directly with school organization. I am not competent to speak on your larger problems of the library and the community. But certain it is that we are developing within the schools themselves more work of the type in which you are interested. There are two general lines of discussion and interest which it seems to me proper for one who is interested primarily in the school to present to those of you who are interested primarily in libraries. First, let me say that we are coming to see that the study period in the school is more and more the

Some Observations in German Schools

One frequently hears criticism of the lecture method of teaching when it is employed in the elementary school. Superintendents are accustomed to tell teachers that they talk too much to their classes and allow the children too little opportunity to express what they have learned at home or read out of books. The American visitor in the elementary schools of Germany is very much impressed by the fact that in those schools an entirely different attitude is assumed toward this matter of oral instruction. In fact, one may say that the German method of instruction is predominantly the lecture method. In most of the Volksschulen the children are very meagerly supplied with books. , For example, the only textbook which they have for the work in geography is an atlas. In many of the schools the children are not supplied even with an atlas. There is no home study of geography. The children get their information from the statements made by the teachers. The usual method of procedure is for the teacher to refer to a wall map or to the maps which lie before the pupils in their atlases and to describe some region which is the subject of consideration. Incidentally it may be remarked that for the most part the regions selected are parts of the German Empire. Relatively little attention is given to the rest of the world, and the other parts of the world that are selected are emphasized in the degree in which they afford opportunities for colonial settlements or trade with the German Empire. After the description of the region has been given by the teacher and the names have been pointed out on the map or looked up in the atlases, the teacher asks the members of the class a series of questions based upon what he has said. These questions are not unlike the questions heard in the ordinary American classroom except that they are of necessity confined very definitely to the material which the

Studies in Principles of Education [Continued]

One of the most urgent problems of present-day education is that of training pupils to meet the practical issues of life. Knowledge is of no value in the opinion of the ordinary man unless it can be applied. The school is urged to eliminate from the course of study everything which has no bearing on business or health or other practical interests. Our arithmetics must have examples which show the applications of addition and subtraction to buying and selling. We must put into arithmetic more measurement because this can be used. In geography it is the same. We must eliminate the fruitless discussions of boundaries and the long lists of names and study routes of travel and the lines of trade. In the high school we must emphasize science and reduce the attention to literature. In all schools we must give a place to handwork. This demand for practical applications is no mere academic plea. School boards are calling upon teachers and superintendents to show reasons for this and that type of instruction in the schools. Merchants and manufacturers are devoting time to the discussion of educational problems and are suggesting trade training or the shortening of the course. Parents are withdrawing their children from the schools as early as the law will allow, confident that more valuable training will be gained through contact with the shop or store or farm than from continued schooling. Pupils are restless and inattentive because they do not see what use it is to study that which is offered in the schools.

Studies of Educational Principles. I. Types of Correlation

The schools took up the suggestion with avidity. Teachers devoted themselves to the discovery of new and interesting associations. They even went farther. They began to invent associations. The writer has a clipping which sets forth the possibility of a novel nature-study lesson to be given on Lincolns birthday. Because Lincoln freed the slaves, and because the slaves came from Africa, from whence the elephant also comes, the elephant is to be made a subject of special study on February 12. Of course this is not a typical example of that which the advocates of correlation would have us do in the schools, but it makes clear by its extreme character the necessity of defining what is the limit of productive correlation.

Studies of Educational Principles [Continued]

For something over a generation, there has been a very definite reaction in our educational system against the abstractions which had grown up during the earlier period when education was primarily literary in its character. The charge is often made today that the older school which dealt chiefly with writing and reading gave children no sensory experiences, and no concrete material which they could carry in mind while they were learning the words in books, and while they were learning the elaborate forms of expression which were sometimes demanded of them in their reading lessons. The reaction against literary education has, in some cases, been so extreme as to suggest that reading and writing can be very largely left to take care of themselves; that the main business of the school consists in giving children new ideas about the material and social worlds. It is asserted that this larger information will stimulate a sufficient desire for reading, and will, at the same time, give the material knowledge for the interpretation of everything that is found in the books. Certain changes in the methods of teaching reading have tended to encourage this reaction toward concrete experiences. Thus, we no longer give instruction in the alphabet as the first step in teaching reading because the letters of the alphabet are in no wise connected with the childrens experiences of things and with their experiences of spoken words. We begin rather by giving the wordwholes which are directly related to objects and to the spoken words which children know. The word-whole thus has a concrete meaning attached to it from the very first, and the process of analysis into the separate letters is allowed to come at a later stage. This method of teaching reading emphasizes the value of the concrete.

A Course in Form Study

It is commonly assumed that recognition of the form and position of objects will develop in children without special instruction on the part of the teacher. No place has been provided in the ordinary school programme for the purpose of training such types of recognition. If one refers to the spatial characteristics of objects as a subject of special study, he is likely to be referred to geometry as an advanced science and as appropriately placed late in the high school course of study. The idea that one may definitely study spatial characteristics in the early grades must be established by some, argument and such argument will always encounter the inertia of tradition. In the effort to show the unreasonableness of the present tradition, one may first review certain salient historical facts. If one considers the development of mathematical science in European history, he finds that the great emphasis was at first on geometry. If this means anything, it shows that the early Greeks, who developed the science long before they had any definite notions of algebra or many of the higher forms of mathematics, were dealing with a problem that naturally suggested itself to those who were beginning the study of the world about them. The early Greeks worked out a kind of experimental geometry. They learned the properties of angles and of the various plane figures by actual contact with these figures and through the effort to fit them to each other. In this way they developed a body of geometrical knowledge which was very complete. It was mature because it had been long studied. At this point came the historical event which made the study of space appear to be a very complicated and advanced form of knowledge. Euclid at the University of Alexandria was acquainted not only with geometry, but also with the forms of