SCHOOL ORGANIZATION AND INSTRUCTION 121 



tion; and it will be the aim, also, to point out some of the most im- 

 portant changes needed in present school organization that the desired 

 end may be attained. 



The chief obstacle at present in the way of socializing the schools is 

 found in their forms of organization. The machinery of the average 

 school is an invention for the purpose of holding a pupil down while 

 we educate him by the breathing-in process. A social institution is an 

 organism; whereas, the school is formed essentially on a plan designed 

 for dealing with a sum of particulars. It is treated as a body having 

 merely the agglutinant characteristics of an aggregation. Few people 

 realize that the transformation of a school of the average type into a 

 social body means more than a change of name; in fact, however, it 

 really means a revolution. 



Regardless of outward forms and of protestations to the contrary, 

 the real end of the school has been and still is the individual for him- 

 self and not the group. The school desk nailed to the floor circum- 

 scribes the space for the individual. The school grade represents an 

 endeavor to get pupils together who are so near alike that they may be 

 treated as an individual. The cry for extremely small classes, the 

 exclusiveness of the small private school, the emplo} r ment of tutors, 

 all stand for efforts made toward the education of the individual for 

 himself practically in a state of isolation. The dead and persistent 

 drill upon the three R's backed up by the birch, by marks, by bribes, 

 by promises of promotion, by threats and by cajolery has but a feeble 

 socializing power. It is on the contrary essentially individualistic in 

 the unwholesome rivalry which it always promotes. 



If any one doubts the barrenness of the social life in our schools 

 let him read as I have done in this the past few days the reminiscent 

 records of students now in the university in which they narrate their 

 experiences in the elementary schools. They tell of a dreary round of 

 lesson learning with a little variation here and there as to the stimuli 

 used, all of which were classed as either personal rewards or personal 

 punishments. It was all summed up admirably by one student who 

 said: "We always had text-books, and definite lessons were learned 

 each day and recited, as it seems now, to the teacher because we invari- 

 ably looked at the teacher while reciting and tried to see some mark of 

 approval on her face." In the entire series of papers there is not a 

 single instance noted when there was any attempt made to establish 

 relations of helpfulness among the pupils themselves. There is, how- 

 ever, considerable mention of various means employed, by the teacher 

 to keep the pupils in a state of isolation from each other. As a matter 

 of fact some of the most elaborate and artistically stupid parts of the 

 school machinery have been especially devised for the purpose of keeping 

 pupils from mutual assistance; whereas, the thing above all else de- 



