Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Come out with me to one of these canneries at three o’clock some morning. Here is the crude shed-like building, with a long dock at which the oyster boats unload their cargoes. Near the dock is the ever present shell pile, a monument of mute testimony to the patient toil of little fingers. It is cold, damp, dark. The whistle blew some time ago, and the young workers slipped into their meager garments, snatched a bite to eat and hurried to the shucking shed. The padrone told me “Ef dey don’t git up, I go and _git ’em up_.” See those little ones over there stumbling through the dark over the shell piles, munching a piece of bread, and rubbing their heavy eyes. Boys and girls, six seven and eight years of age, take their places with the adults and work all day.

The cars are ready for them with their loads of dirty, rough clusters of shells, and as these shells accumulate under foot in irregular piles, they soon make the mere matter of standing one of physical strain. Notice the uncertain footing, and the dilapidated foot-wear of that little girl, and opposite is one with cloth fingers to protect herself from the jagged shells—they call them “finger-stalls.” Their fingers are often sore in spite of this precaution.

When they are picking shrimps, their fingers and even their shoes are attacked by a corrosive substance in the shrimp that is strong enough to eat the tin cans into which they are put. The day’s work on shrimp is much shorter than on oysters as the fingers of the worker give out in spite of the fact that they are compelled to harden them in an alum solution at the end of the day. Moreover, the shrimp are packed in ice, and a few hours handling of these icy things is dangerous for any child. Then, too, the mornings, and many of the days, are cold, foggy and damp.

The workers are thinly clad, but, like the fabled ostrich, cover their heads and imagine they are warm. If a child is sick, it gets a vacation, and wanders around to kill time.

The youngest of all shift for themselves at a very early age. One father told me that they brought their baby, two months old, down to the shucking shed at four o’clock every morning and kept it there all day. Another told me that they locked a baby of six months in the shack when they went away in the morning, and left it until noon, then left it alone again all the afternoon. A baby carriage with its occupant half smothered under piles of blankets is a common sight. Snuggled up against a steam box you find many a youngster asleep on a cold morning. As soon as they can toddle, they hang around the older members of the family, something of a nuisance, of course, and very early they learn to amuse themselves. For hours at a time, they play with the dirty shells, imitating the work of the grown-ups. They toddle around the shed, and out on to the docks at the risk of their lives.

A little older and they learn to “tend the baby.” As a substitute for real recreation, this baby tending is pathetic.

Mary said, “I shucks six pots if I don’t got the baby; two pots if I got him.”

As soon as they can handle the oysters and shrimps, they are “allowed to help.”

The mother often says, “Sure. I’m learnin’ her de trade,” and you see many youngsters beginning to help at a very early age. Standing on a box in order to reach the table, little Olga, five years old, was picking shrimps for her mother at the cannery I visited. Later in the day, I found her at home worn out with the work she had been doing, but the mother complained that Olga was “ugly.” Little sympathy they get when they most need it! Four-year-old Mary was working irregularly through the day shucking about two pots of oysters. The mother is the fastest shucker in the place, and the boss said,

“Mary will work _steady_ next year.” The most excitement that many of them get from one month to another is that of being dressed up in their Sunday best to spend the day seeing the sights of the settlement.

Now we all know that the amount of work these little ones can do is not much, and yet I have been surprised and horrified at the number of hours a day a six or a seven year old will stay at work, and this with the willing and eager consent of the parents. “Freckled Bill,” a bright lad of five years, told me that he worked, and his mother added reproachfully,

“He kin make fifteen cents any day he wants to work, but he won’t do it steady.”

Annie, seven years old, is a steady worker. The mother said, for her benefit, of course, “She kin beat me shuckin’, an’ she’s mighty good at housework too, but I mustn’t praise her too much right before her.”

This is only one of the means used to keep the children at work. Another method is to tell the neighbors that Annie can shuck eight pots a day. Then some other child beats the record, and so the interest is kept up, and incidentally the work is done and the family income enlarged. Can we call that motherhood? Compared with real maternity, it is a distorted perversion, a travesty. The baby at Ellis Island little dreams what is in store for him.

Hundreds of these children from four to twelve years of age are regularly employed, often as helpers, for the greater part of the six months if it is a good season. At three and four years of age they play around and help a little, “learnin’ de trade.” At five and six years of age they work more regularly, and at seven and eight years, they put in long hours every working day. This is the regular program for these children day after day, week after week for the six months of their alleged—“outing down South.”

I remarked to one of the village people, “It’s a wonder that these youngsters live through it all.”

“Yes,” she replied, “and when they _don’t_ live through it, there is a corner over in a little cemetery waiting for them, and _many of them go there_.”

You see, “They’re only Hickeys.”

I suppose the cemetery is one of the “conveniences” that the company does not boast about.

CHILDREN OF THE OYSTER CANNERIES

A young girl who has been shucking six years and earns a dollar a day;
a little mother who alternates baby tending and oyster shucking; a
ten-year-old worker has no time for school.
]

The wages of these workers vary according to their locality, and the kind of season they find. The work on the shrimp is better paid than oyster shucking, but it is much more irregular. On the latter families frequently earn ten and fifteen or twenty dollars a week so when there are several children, and the work is steady, there is a great temptation to make them all help. Children of seven years earn about twenty-five cents a day, and at eight and ten years of age often fifty cents a day or more. At twelve and fourteen years they frequently earn as high as a dollar a day and this is adult pay. The fastest adult shucker seldom earns much more than a dollar a day after years of experience. What then is the outlook for children beginning this industry?

“What is your name, little girl?”

“Dunno.”

“How old are you?”

“Dunno.”

“How many pots do you shuck in a day?”

“Dunno.”

And the pity of it is that _they do not know_.

What then do they know? Enough to stand patiently with the rest picking up one hard, dirty cluster of shells, deftly prying them open, dropping the meat into the pot; and then go through this process with another and another and another, until after many minutes the pot is full—a relief, for they carry it over to the weigher and rest doing nothing a minute, and walk back,—such a change from the dreary standing, reaching, prying and dropping—minute upon minute, hour upon hour, day upon day, month after month. Or perchance, for variety, the catch may have been shrimp, and then the hours of work are shorter, but the shrimp are icy cold, and the blood in one’s fingers congeals, and the fingers become so sore that she welcomes the oysters again.

Are you surprised then to find that many children seem dumb and can not understand our language?

“But we educate them” some canners tell us.

This is the way they do it. In the few places where I found any pretense to education the children shucked oysters for four hours before school. Then they went to school for half a day, returning at one o’clock for a hurried lunch. They worked for four hours more, five days in the week. On Saturday they put in an alleged half day consisting of eight or nine hours work. Is it any marvel that the school principal told me “It isn’t satisfactory, but at least we are giving them some help in learning the language.” They need the help. At another place, with two canneries, but two children were going to school, and the illiteracy of both adults and children was appalling.

“There is no compulsion about schooling here,” the principal said.

The “vocational guidance” which most of them receive, year in and year out, is seen in the sheds where under the eagle eye of the boss, who watches to see that they do not shirk, and under the pressure of parental authority, they put in their time where it will bring tangible returns. One padrone told me:

“I keep ’em a-working all the year. In the winter, bring ’em down here to the gulf. In Summer, take ’em to the berry fields of Maryland and Delaware. They don’t lose many weeks’ time, but I have a hard time to get ’em sometimes. Have to tell ’em all kinds of lies.”

So here we have a certain kind of “scientific management” of child labor by means of which even the vacation time of the children is utilized.

“Why do they do it?”—that question comes to one over and over; what keeps these little ones at their uninteresting task? In the first place, their immigrant parents are frugal, even parsimonious, and every little helps. Then they think it keeps the children out of trouble, little realizing that they are storing up trouble when they grow up, handicapped by lack of education, broken physically, and with a distaste for work. Small wonder if they drift into the industrial maelstrom of cheap, inefficient labor, and float on as industrial misfits.

If we look at it from the employer’s point of view, we find his chief justification is that children are needed because the goods are perishable, and must be put up immediately. You ask him if the children are not perishable, and he says he can’t see that they are spoiled. “It doesn’t hurt ’em. They’re tough. I began myself at their age,” and so on. It will be long years before these employers will be looking at this children’s labor with a long-range finder, a problem to be met along with that of improved machinery. The children themselves are docile; they do as they are told; they are imitative, like to do what the rest are doing; they are easily stimulated by the idea of competing with other children; and they are very sensitive to criticism and ridicule. I do not, however, recall a single case of a child being whipped for not working. It can easily be seen that with the parents, or employers, and children against it, the task of liberation from this commercialized family peonage of immature workers is not an easy one.

On the Atlantic Coast more Negroes are employed, than on the Gulf Coast, and they do not work the children very much, except where they have come under the influence of the immigrant workers. In almost every case, the bosses and padrones agree that the Baltimore workers are much more satisfactory than the Negroes. They say:

“There is no comparing them. The whites work harder, longer hours, are more easily driven, and use the children much more.”

The chief advantage of Negro help is that it saves the cost of transportation. Where it is necessary to get the work done promptly the immigrants are imported.

That this exploitation of the children is absolutely unnecessary is proven by the canneries that get along without them. It needs merely more efficient planning on the part of the managers, and better supervision on the part of the state. It is certainly a condition not to be endured when we consider the hardships involved—the long hours, the monotonous and tiring work, the irregular conditions of work and of life, the exposure, the unsanitary surroundings, the moral dangers, the lack of education, and the double exploitation of summer and winter.

One morning I found a little cannery worker setting about her endless job. At the end of the day as I passed near, human nature asserted itself. She asked me to photograph her dolly too, this oyster shucker.

SHE SHUCKS OYSTERS

For twenty-five cents a day. Seven-year-old Gulf Coast worker.
]

_M’AMS AND SUPERM’AMS_

How the public school, responding to the trend of the twentieth century, is developing new staff and personality to link up the classroom with the individual aptitudes of children and with their life outside of school hours, with home-making, workmanship and community life.

_THE VISITING TEACHER_
_THE VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR_
_THE HOUSEHOLD ADMINISTRATOR_

SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

ELEANOR HOPE JOHNSON

SECRETARY COMMITTEE ON THE HYGIENE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, PUBLIC EDUCATION
ASSOCIATION

Kate Douglas Wiggin, in one of her most appealing stories, tells of a child who was walking in a garden with his mother when they came upon a misshapen tree. In reply to the mother’s question as to why the tree was crooked the child replied that he guessed someone had stepped on it when it was little. So it is with many of the children in our larger cities—they get stepped on physically, intellectually and spiritually when they are young.

Little Ivan, whose mother had come here from Russia after passing through we know not how many scenes of terror and suffering, bore the stamp of her misery on his face and in his soul. When he came to a New York public school at eight years of age it seemed impossible that teacher and textbook should be able to do anything for him. He was ragged and dirty and could not speak. But after patient effort the teacher of the special class, where he had been put, found that he was not a mute and that he did understand English. Next, his mother was seen, and she became so interested in her boy’s welfare that his ragged days were brought to an end. A new suit of clothes and a clean face transformed him into an intelligent and alert looking youngster. Now he is struggling with the words, “boy and ran, dog and book,” and is attacking the other branches with some notion of what they are all about. His destructive tendency is being dealt with firmly and patiently, and there are great hopes that some day Ivan may develop into a normal and sturdy boy.

NELLO, THE “UTTERLY BAD”

Until a visiting teacher went to his home and found his mother dying
of cancer, Nello nursing her and the three younger children, and the
father sharing his morning beer with the undersized boy. The
schoolroom tantrum was understood then. Nello was sent to the
country.
]

This story of Ivan is a good illustration of what the school can do to help prevent the little trees from being so harshly trodden upon. It is also a good illustration of the manner in which they can do it. For it is one of the most promising signs of our times that our conception of the process called education is a constantly broadening one. It is no longer enough to teach children to read, write and cipher, even to draw, cook and sew. We have been in the past contented with the dictum that the public schools exist in order to abolish illiteracy, but now we are inclined to take the fuller meaning which, surprisingly enough, the dictionary gives: “to educate is to qualify for the business and duties of life.” Up to now, unfortunately, the dictionary has not been followed with too great care. Much time has been lost and from the results of this loss we are now suffering. In our new vision, the schools must not only train children toward constructive citizenship, but must do what they can to prevent the development of destructive citizens, must help in overcoming completely the original anti-social condition into which psychologists tell us children are born.

Industrial teaching and vocational guidance through the public schools should do much to bring about this training toward constructive citizenship. But for the equally important task of prevention some preliminary work must be done. Obstacles must be removed. Those who can profit by such training must be sifted out from those who cannot, and through the schools we must fit by some preliminary process, those who at first sight seem unfit. For in the schools are often found the beginning of all the bitter problems with which our strongest philanthropic organizations are struggling so manfully. “Millions for cure, nothing for prevention” sometimes seems to express pretty clearly where the emphasis has been placed in the past. The schools can help greatly if they would get back behind the present situation, and discuss, point out, and if necessary, perform these acts of prevention.

What does all this mean? It means that social service must come to be regarded as a justifiable function of the schools, as justifiable as it has already become in the case of at least two other institutions.

Upwards of twenty years ago a militant clergyman in New York is quoted as having said: “It is all very well to talk of saving souls, but I never yet have seen a soul that was not connected with a body.” At that time religious work was confined much more closely than it now is within certain traditional limits, and these ringing words did much to turn the attention of the churches toward their old ideal of social service.

A later grafting of the spirit of social service on long established practices is shown in the progress of hospital social service. What first opened the eyes of the medical profession is not recorded, but it was soon proven that the assurance given to a woman at the hospital that her children were being well cared for in her absence hastened her recovery, and that the visits of a wise and sympathetic nurse or trained social worker to the home of a discharged patient almost always succeeded in preventing that patient’s return because of a relapse due to carelessness or ignorance. A physician in a large Boston hospital where the social service is famous for its completeness and efficiency has said that a good social service nurse saves her salary twice over by the cures she hastens and the returns she prevents.

There is a tradition in this country on which we greatly pride ourselves, that education, at least in certain of its fundamental branches, is free to all who wish to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the state. Indeed, we go so far in most of our states as to make it not only free but compulsory between certain ages. But look carefully through any large school and many a small one, and you will find children who would gladly partake of this free education but who for many reasons, and through no fault of their own, are unable to do so. Children who sit idly in school or stumble blindly through a grade or two, and children whose names are finally taken from the register because for them no place in school can be made. And so we come to see that our free education is for those fortunate ones who are fitted for it, while for others it is practically non-existent. You can compel a child to go to school, but you cannot compel him to profit by his stay there.

The story of Nello is a pathetic illustration of this. Here was a boy of eleven, pitifully small for his age, who had been placed in an ungraded class, and was disturbing the class and distracting the teacher by his utter badness. A visitor was asked to investigate the home conditions and find out a possible explanation for his incorrigibility. She found ample cause. Nello’s mother was dying of cancer. His father was a heavy drinker, often out of work, who shared his beer with the small boy instead of getting proper food for him each morning. Nello was the only nurse his mother and the three younger children had, and his burden of responsibility gave him no other outlet except the schoolroom tantrum. A nurse and proper food were secured. The two youngest children were placed temporarily in an institution. Nello was taken to a doctor who said that the boy was permanently dwarfed because of his alcoholic diet, and the father was induced to discontinue this and give him milk instead. With better food and some time in the country it may be proved that Nello is only temporarily dwarfed mentally, even if his physical state is permanent. In any event, with the burden, too great for his narrow shoulders, finally removed the boy is now doing well in school and his future is not hopeless.

CLASS FOR ANAEMIC CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL

When the room is in a building the windows are so arranged that the
largest amount of air is taken into the room. The windows are never
closed.
]

Happily certain phases of the situation are now being remedied. Through the increase in the differentiation of special classes within the schools our educational systems are making education more nearly free to all, and so taking a most important part in the great work of prevention. We are ceasing to think quite so exclusively of the ambulances at the foot of the precipice and are building our fence, foot by foot, across its top. By means of these special classes, the different demands which differently constituted minds and bodies make are in great part met, the fact that certain obstacles prevent many minds from attaining full development is recognized; and due allowance is made for the effect physical and mental handicaps have on individual education.

To give an instance: In the public schools of New York these special classes are carried out to an admirable extent. Physical handicaps are recognized and provided for in the classes for cripples, for blind, anaemic and tubercular children, and in the School for the Deaf. The teachers of these classes come to know a great deal about the homes and the individual difficulties of their pupils, and what home or medical care will be of the greatest assistance to them educationally. Bodies are cared for, lunches even are furnished, that the mind may have a chance to grow strong and keen—for the school lunch is more and more recognized as a real factor in education.

For the backward children and for those who are mentally rather than physically defective, there are other special classes; those for the over-age children, for foreigners who come to school before they have learned to speak English, for children who are trying to get their working papers, and the so-called Ungraded Class for those who are apparently or really backward to a hopeless extent. Often members of this latter group find their way into the classes for foreign children or those who are trying for working papers, so limiting the best usefulness of those classes.

But one step further must be taken, and in some places and in some connections is being taken in this work of prevention, and of bringing together the incomplete little being and his opportunity for becoming more complete. This step is the adaptation of the ideal of social service to our educational work and through it we shall finally come to see, I believe, the supremely important part the schools must play in the solution of our most perplexing social problems. Often this part will be not to take the actual steps themselves, but to point out to other especially equipped agencies the steps that must be taken by them in order to prevent future misery and crime. From the schools must come our most valuable information and advice concerning the treatment of various groups of dependent children. They constitute the great dragnet and the natural clearing house.

The day is fast coming when just as surely as social service is an inseparable and honored part of both religious and medical institutions, so it shall be of our educational work. Phases of this service or movements closely allied to it, are already being slowly introduced into the public school systems of some cities, volunteer agencies are carrying on a more definite social service in close connection with the schools, and always a good teacher, interested to learn of the home surroundings of her pupils, is the most effective social service worker the schools can have.

But when the effort is made to introduce direct social service into the school system itself a suspicion has often been felt on the part of the governing body, or on that of the taxpayer, that here is an attempt to turn the schools into charitable centers. They do not seem to realize nor take to heart the message of that minister of twenty years ago that while it is all very well to talk about training the mind, no one has ever yet seen a mind that was not connected with a body. The obstacles which often prevent the mind’s full development must be discovered and removed before the education the schools offer can be taken full advantage of. The same close relationship which hospital social service bring about with a patient’s home must be established by the school with the homes of its pupils—as in the case of Nello—so that any hindrance to a child’s education existing there may be ascertained and as far as possible overcome. Much social service of a valuable kind has been carried on in connection with some of the special classes in the New York city schools by outside agencies devoted to the care of particular forms of physical defect, and their assistance to both teachers and pupils has been generous and effective. In some cases the closest relation has existed between these organizations and the school system, as in the case of the classes for cripples. But as yet none of this work has been made an actual part of the system, though its value is recognized and the volunteer service used to the fullest extent.

CLASS FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL

Note the adjustable chairs which can be suited to the particular
difficulty of the child occupying it. Much manual work is done in
these classes.
]

Last year the social worker who was supplied to the department of ungraded classes of the New York public schools by the Public Education Association proved abundantly the need for such work in connection with all the special classes for children who are backward from any cause whatever. Children who appeared to be hopelessly defective were taken by this worker to hospitals or clinics and found to be far more nearly normal than had been at first supposed. Children who seemed to be in immediate danger of getting into evil ways because of their mental defect and whose parents were unequal to the task of keeping them from harming themselves or others, were placed in institutions where they could be taught and cared for. Out of a hundred cases investigated the visitor succeeded in placing nineteen in institutions. Unwillingness on the part of parents or lack of room in the institutions prevented putting the others there also. On the other hand, the child who could not remain in the regular grades because of mental weakness was visited at home, his difficulties explained to the parents, who were ignorantly and often cruelly blaming him for a fault not his own, and he was finally placed, with the parents’ full understanding and consent, in an ungraded class. Adjustments have been made which will affect many a child’s whole career for good, advice has been given at home which has in some cases changed the status of an entire family.

GROUP FROM A CLASS FOR FOREIGN CHILDREN IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL

These children of immigrant parents enter the class immediately on
landing. The average stay is three months, when they go out into the
regular grades for which they are fitted, according to the previous
education they have had in their own countries. One teacher says:
“They absorb just like little sponges. They are so eager to learn.”
]

Because of the work done by this visitor and the effective way in which the inspector of ungraded classes has incorporated her work into the general plan for these classes; and also on account of the recommendation made by the State Charities Aid Association that more knowledge should be secured by the schools of the atypical children there, the New York Board of Education has decided to install two such visitors in the Department of Ungraded Classes. This is the first time, so far as I know, that an appropriation has been made by a school system for such a purpose. It is a step towards fulfilling this newer ideal of education of which New York city may well be proud.

It is impossible to measure the good that would result if this service were widened to include the other classes for backward children I have mentioned, particularly the working paper classes. At the Board of Health the other day a pretty Italian girl of fifteen was examined for her working paper. Her writing of the simplest English sentence was so poor that her paper was refused, and she was told she must stay in school until she was sixteen. The girl and her father came in despair to appeal to the head of the department. It was not a case of poverty; the father had work, and so had older brothers and sisters. On the girl’s side it was discontent and restlessness—“I do not want to go to school any more; they scold me all the time.” She had been in a special working paper class and had undoubtedly been dull and unambitious. The father had a more serious story. His English was halting, they talked only Italian at home, he told me, which accounted somewhat for the girl’s curious mistakes. But the mother was dead, the older sister working, and there was no one at home to look after the girl in her hours after school. The father’s distressed face showed clearly his perplexity as to the chaperonage of his daughter according to the Italian ideas. It was not safe or proper that she should be at home alone or wandering about the streets; she was better off at work. Whether the father’s statement was true or not, without much question the girl will never go regularly to school again, if she goes at all—in spite of attendance officers and all—and for another year she cannot go legally to work. It is not hard to guess the sequel, and the remedy is equally easy to see. How long will it take us to learn that when we take something from young people which they must not have, we must at the same moment supply its place with something desirable but safe. Social service directly connected with the school would solve the future of the pretty little Italian and of many others in the same evil case. They want not only the careful schooling that will correct the lack which prevents them from going to work, but, more than that, the home visiting which shall explain the need for this further training and arouse interest in the connection between school and work.

The best example of volunteer social service in connection with the public schools is that which for several years has been carried on by various outside agencies interested in linking more closely the school and the home, but always limited to work with the regular grades.

The Home and School League of Philadelphia has done valuable work in arousing interest in this direction, and now a number of such visitors are at work in the city supported by various private organizations. They are doing the same sort of work as that done by the visitors in New York and Boston, although from the reports it would seem that both in Philadelphia and Boston special attention is given by them to vocational guidance. A particularly valuable piece of work has been done by the home visitor appointed by the Armstrong Association to work among the colored pupils of Philadelphia; the Friend’s Preventive Association, the Juvenile Protective Association, and the Children’s Aid Societies, also support visitors. These are being used to an increasing degree by the Bureau of Compulsory Education of Philadelphia in carrying on the preventive work connected with that bureau.

In Boston there are now five full-time and seven or eight part time school visitors. Each visitor is engaged by some private organization, such as the Women’s Educational Association, the Home and School Association, a group of settlements, or by some individual. She is attached to a special school or district and does all her work there. This is the arrangement in all three cities. The work has been supervised by a committee of the Women’s Educational Association, and this committee represents settlements and other social agencies. Work of this sort, but on a smaller scale, is being done both in Worcester, Mass., and in Rochester, N. Y., the visiting teachers working under the Public Education Association of New York have been increasingly effective in their efforts to solve for the often overburdened teacher problems connected with individual children.

Efforts have been made from time to time by the supervising force to instruct teachers to visit the homes of the children in their classrooms and ascertain the conditions under which they were living, but with the present large size of classes in most public schools this has been found to be quite impracticable. Besides this, to overcome the difficulties in the way of a child’s education much visiting of an expert sort and many efforts for outside co-operation are often necessary, for which the teachers could not possibly find time. Separate visitors are therefore needed. There are so many illustrations of the sort of work they do, that it is hard to select one that is more telling than the rest.

From the report of a Boston visitor we learn of Angelina Conti, who was constantly tardy, frequently absent, and never alert or quick in her recitations. “She seems to lack ambition,” says the report, “and must be dropped into a lower grade unless something can be done to brace her up.” The visitor is sent to the home. She finds that Angelina is the oldest of nine children and that the family lives in three rooms. The burden of the family seems to rest on Angelina, who must wash the clothes every afternoon when she comes from school, and go for the baby’s milk before school in the morning. Angelina is a perfectly compliant, patient little soul. She has a headache most of the time, but expects to do all that her mother asks of her. She hopes that the teacher won’t “degrade” her.

The visitor urges Mrs. Conti to send a younger child for milk in the morning so that Angelina can come promptly to school. The headaches are reported to the school nurse, who sends Angelina to the hospital for much needed treatment. The whole situation is explained to the teacher, who gladly promises to send Angelina home promptly in the afternoon so that she may have time for her housework. There is a much better understanding between Angelina and her teacher, her health improves, she comes more regularly and keeps her class. Thus is the first step in preventing dependency taken.

An interesting part of the work of these social service workers has been to bring to bear on the lives of these “difficult children” all the agencies which might be of assistance. This same Boston visitor states in her report that “this new work of visiting the homes of the school children is one of continual co-operation with principals, teachers, truant officers, janitors and the children themselves, also with hospitals, dispensaries, employment agencies, the Associated Charities, or whatever the emergency may demand.” Too often this sort of effort is scattered and ineffective because of the lack of connection between agencies. With a visitor working from the school as a starting point and not from any private organization, the connection is quickly made and the influence of each helping agency is strengthened by the added influence of every other. This has proved to be just as true in the case of medical social service, particularly that of public hospitals and institutions, and one might almost prophesy that some day the relief work of philanthropic agencies will come only in response to calls from the social service departments of church, hospital, public institution and school, and that a great clearing house for these agencies, public and private, will be the best way of organizing charity.

Be that as it may, social service is as surely needed in connection with training people’s minds as it is with saving their souls and curing their bodies. It is easier to train our vines to grow straight and sure and to cling to the lattices we choose for them, if at the same time the soil is watered and enriched that the roots may be strong, and all things harmful to the plant’s health are carefully kept from it. “As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” but the twig must be strong and healthy as well as straight, if the tree is to do its part in forming the forests our country must have if it would be prosperous. Surely anything that will make more effective the mental training and development of our country’s future citizens is as fully justified.

THE VISITING TEACHER IN ACTION

MARY FLEXNER

VISITING TEACHER, PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, NEW YORK CITY

Walter preferred to play ball under the kindly protection of the Queensborough Bridge to attending school where he had no chance to show his ability as a leader. He had successfully evaded all the visits of the truant officer, and when his teacher asked me, a visiting teacher, to try my luck, I wondered what I should find. I called first upon his mother at her place of business and found her in thorough sympathy with the school, but apparently powerless to make her son attend. Walter took advantage of the fact that she left the house before he did, and as they alone comprised the family, he could disobey her and go to school or not as he saw fit. There was no one but himself to report to her in the evening just how he had spent his day.

I chose supper time for my first visit, and found him, as I hoped, at home, a little tired from his day’s play and hungry, of course. His mother was there too. She was surprised when I told her that her son had not attended school that day, nor indeed for many days previously. We talked of many things, and just before leaving, I ventured to ask Walter what he wanted to be when he was a man. He was then twelve years old. He did not hesitate an instant. He wanted, he said, to be an architect. And then his mother showed me a little calendar he had painted which adorned the closet door. We struck a bargain. If he went to school regularly, I was to arrange with his teacher to give him a palette and brushes so that he could paint. It was possible to do this as he was in a special class in which the course of study is more easily adapted to the child’s needs.

The next morning, when I opened the classroom door, two pairs of smiling eyes greeted me—the teacher’s and Walter’s. At once the teacher and I planned our campaign. Walter was to learn that at school he could get a chance at leadership too, for could he not play games there? At first, perhaps, they seemed tame compared with those under the bridge, for the classroom or the school-yard, even when given over to ball or bean-bag, does not easily associate itself in the child’s mind with scenes of adventure. However, the chance of some time being captain of the team had charms even for him. The proof is to be found in the fact that he attended school regularly, earning, in so doing, his palette and brushes and at the end of the term promotion to a regular class.

The work of the visiting teacher has passed the experimental stage. The position was created to bridge a gap in the existing school machinery. The visiting teacher’s province lies outside that of the regular teacher, the attendance officer and the school nurse, though like the attendance officer and the school nurse, she goes into the child’s home. To her is assigned the group called the “difficult” children, and it is her aim to discover, if possible, the cause of the difficulty which manifests itself in poor scholarship, annoying conduct, irregular attendance, or the need of or desire for advice on some important phase of life. It is too much to expect the regular teacher, handicapped as she is by her large class, to cope with such situations. Nor is it to be expected that those qualified to act as attendance officer or school nurse, were they not already overburdened, should do the work of the visiting teacher. In her is united the training that makes a teacher and a social service worker, and it is because of this combination that she is able to widen the regular teacher’s reach and help her interpret and solve the problems as they present themselves.

From the school she learns that the child is apparently making little effort; that his work is “C” or worse; that he is perpetually making trouble in the class room and is never attentive: that he seems lifeless, unable to keep pace with the class; that he attends so irregularly that it is impossible to teach him anything, or that he has no time to study and the situation at home is such that he must leave school and go to work. With these facts as clues she sets to work; it is impossible to define her methods, for they vary with her tact and resourcefulness and with the specific character of the problem before her. Briefly, they are the methods that spring from a friendly interest, an intimate personal relation.

Between the home and the school the visiting teacher vibrates, carrying to the former the school’s picture of the child and returning to the school to reinforce that impression or to shed new light upon the problem. There is no fixed number of times that she is expected to travel this path, as there is no fixed hour of the day for her visits. The urgency and complexity of a situation alone determine her movements. Nor is there any regular routine of action that she follows. Whatever in her judgment seems imperative, she endeavors to effect, using to this end everything the ingenuity of man has devised to make smooth the rough places of life.

It is a focussing of interests that she demands. The child is the pivotal point on which she hopes to bring all her knowledge and experience to bear. Sometimes it is the expert teacher’s training that she invokes; sometimes the psychologist or the physician, general or special, that she consults; or again it is the social worker to whom she appeals. Before these she lays the facts, the reasons why her services have been sought and from them she asks co-operation. To the adult, she is the visiting teacher; to the child, she is simply the “lady cop.”

The results achieved do not always show a complete cure. In some cases there has been a marked improvement in scholarship, conduct or attendance,—at least a good start in the right direction has been made. In other cases the child has been transferred to a different class, regular, special or ungraded, or to a trade school, where his chances at succeeding in making a place for himself are increased. Again, the information the visiting teacher shares with the regular teacher has resulted in a change of attitude toward the child, in an expansion or contraction of the course of study, or in her giving the child extra instruction in study periods or out of school hours. Finally, he has been helped to promotion, even to graduation.

Last year 1,157 cases were handled by the seven visiting teachers maintained in New York by the Public Education Association. The majority of these came directly through the school, but in a few instances the visiting teacher was called in by the child’s mother, a neighbor, or the child himself, all of whom, looking to her for help, show not only an appreciation of the fact that something is wrong, but also an understanding of what the visiting teacher is trying to accomplish. Their appeal emphasizes the necessity for just such a connection as she makes. Other cases came through settlements, charity organizations, churches, or the visiting teacher herself, whose attention had been attracted to some child on her rounds through the classrooms. In every instance, however, before the child technically becomes a case, the principal and teacher are conferred with. His school record must show him to be below standard in either scholarship, conduct or attendance, or in need of such advice or information as will, if followed, enhance his general well being.

Five hundred and five of the children visited were below standard in scholarship. This deficiency might be due to any one of a number of causes directly traceable to “home conditions,” such as congested or unsanitary living quarters, child labor, “overburdened childhood,” and ignorance of or indifference to the school’s claims. Or it might be that some school adjustment was necessary; for example, de-moting the child that is mentally and physically unequal to the grade’s requirements; or drawing him out in recitations, should he be nervous or timid; or helping him in the preparation of the studies that trouble him.

Three hundred and thirteen children were below standard in conduct; that is, they were either out of sympathy with the school environment or they were guilty of some offence, such as stealing, lying, cheating, or sexual irregularity.

Four hundred and sixty-five children were irregular in attendance. Since the same child is sometimes below standard in scholarship and irregular in attendance, or in need of advice and information, the groups here mentioned often overlap and the numbers total more than 1,157.

Six hundred and seventy-five needed advice or information. In all of these cases the child needed someone to plead his cause either at home or at school, that he might be the more thoroughly understood and that his special need, whether it be recreational, physical, or vocational, might be satisfied.

The task of the visiting teacher is plain. She must get at the facts. This she does by studying closely the child’s environment, realizing that he is the product of varied associations and influences. There are circles within circles—the home, the school, the immediate neighborhood, and what at times seems almost “beyond his ken,” the great wide world itself. No analysis of the forces that in their play and interplay tend to shape this young life would be complete that did not include the shifting, kaleidoscopic scenes amid which so often his plastic years are spent; nor would the picture be lifelike did it not show upon its face the changes that are wrought through that remoter contact with men and things.

The action followed depends naturally upon what the investigation reveals. Should the home be at fault, then an effort is made to remove the “trouble maker,” and, should this be impossible, then effort is made at least to effect some compromise, the benefit of which the child will reap both in the home and in the school.

Margaret had many times struck a discordant note in the classroom. At home she had always had her own way. Small wonder, then, that she played the prank she did in the assembly. In the midst of the gathering of some five hundred children when the morning exercises were being held, she spoke loud enough to be disturbing, and when reprimanded and told to leave the hall, she walked its full length on her heels, thus creating a greater disturbance and openly defying the principal’s authority. She was sent home and the matter was explained to her parents. The child felt that she had been insulted because ordered from the room, and the mother, unfortunately, took her side. At first she could not be made to see that if her child saw fit to leave the hall as she chose, the other 499 might use their wits to the same end and pandemonium result. Only after repeated interviews with the visiting teacher and after the child had lost fully a month of school did the mother allow her to return.

Sometimes it happens that the child has neither time nor place to study. “The noise, it gets me all mixed up,” is her pathetic comment. The neighborhood is scoured till a quiet room is found, either in a settlement, a sisterhood, or a public library, and then the mother’s co-operation is enlisted and many times secured when she understands that noise, interruptions and general disorder are not conducive to the formation of good habits of study.

Should it happen that the child’s work is seriously impaired because his sleep is interfered with, either because the mother’s work is carried late into the night and goes on in the child’s so-called bedroom, or because he is allowed to partake too freely of tea and coffee, the injurious effects of this way of living are demonstrated and the family is, in the one case, urged to move to better rooms, and in the other, plead with until milk and cocoa are substituted for tea and coffee. If then, the longed-for change sets in, showing itself in the child’s ability to make normal responses at school, word is carried to the home and thereby is strengthened the bond that makes these two centers one in their desire to promote the child’s well being.

But there are times when the cause is not so obvious and does not lend itself so easily to a simple solution. It happens often that what to the school appears a lack of co-operation on the part of the home means only that the parents have tried and failed. Again and again the visiting teacher is besought “Use your influence,” “Come and advise us,” “Robert” or “Alice,” “pays attention to you,”—all of which reduced to its lowest terms means that somewhere there is failure to understand. “It is because we are treated as we are at home that we run the streets,” is the way one girl of fourteen sums up the situation.

On the other hand it may happen that the source of the difficulty is to be found in the school itself, in the conditions that surround the child there, which, in the light of the information gathered in the home, expose to view some serious maladjustment. Perhaps it is a case of simple misunderstanding between teacher and pupil, the former holding the latter to a sort of rule-of-thumb scale of measurement when, mentally and physically, the child is incapable of following. Handicapped by nature, perhaps one of a long line similarly affected, is it to be expected that his reactions will be what in age and grade they should be? For such as he the hope lies in a curriculum so elastic that at some point the spark of interest cannot fail to be struck.