What the Schools Teach and Might Teach | Page 7

slow to be thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow work is often superficial and that rapid work is often excellent. In fact the world's best workers are generally rapid, accurate, and thorough. Ask any business man of wide experience. Now leaving aside pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed that pupils will acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits according to the way they are taught. If they are brought up by the slow plan, naturally when speeded up suddenly, the quality of their work declines. They can be rapid, accurate, and thorough only if such strenuous work begins early and is continued consistently. Slow habits are undesirable if better ones can just as well be implanted.
To avoid possible misunderstanding, it ought to be stated that the plan recommended does not mean less drill upon the mechanical side of reading. We are recommending a somewhat more modernized kind of mechanics, and a much more strenuous kind of drill. The plan looks both toward more reading and improved habits of reading.
One final suggestion finds here its logical place. Before the reading work of elementary or high schools can be modernized, the city must purchase the books used in the work. Leaving the supplying of books to private purchase is the largest single obstacle in the way of progress. Men in the business world will have no difficulty in seeing the logic of this. When shoes, for example, were made by hand, each workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that elaborate machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It is so in almost every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced. Now the books to be read are the tools in the teaching of reading. In a former day when a mastery of the mechanics of reading was all that seemed to be needed, the privately purchased textbook could suffice. In our day when other ends are set up beyond and above those of former days, a far more elaborate and expensive equipment is required. The city must now supply the educational tools. It is well to face this issue candidly and to state the facts plainly. Relative failure can be the only possible lot of reluctant communities. They can count on it with the same assurance as that of a manufacturer of shoes who attempts to employ the methods of former days in competition with modern methods.
In this city the expenditures for supplementary textbooks have amounted to something more than $31,000 in the past 10 years. Approximately one-third of this sum was spent in the first seven years of the decade and more than $20,000 in the past three years. This indicates the rapid advance in this direction made under the present school administration but the supply of books still falls far short of the needs of the schools. A fair start has been made but nothing should be permitted to obstruct rapid progress in this direction.

SPELLING
Cleveland has set apart an average amount of program time for spelling. Possibly the study might more accurately be called word-study, since it aims also at training for pronunciation, syllabification, vocabulary extension, and etymology. Since much of the reading time is given to similar word-study, the figures presented in Table 4 are really too small to represent actual practice in Cleveland.
TABLE 4.--TIME GIVEN TO SPELLING ======================================================== | Hours per year | Per cent of grade time |-----------------------|------------------------ Grade | Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities -------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 47 | 54 | 6.5 | 6.3 2 | 63 | 66 | 7.2 | 7.3 3 | 79 | 73 | 9.0 | 8.0 4 | 63 | 67 | 7.1 | 6.9 5 | 51 | 61 | 5.7 | 6.3 6 | 47 | 58 | 5.4 | 5.9 7 | 47 | 52 | 5.4 | 5.3 8 | 47 | 51 | 5.4 | 5.1 ======================================================== Total | 444 | 482 | 6.5 | 6.4 --------------------------------------------------------
The general plan of the course is indicated in the syllabus:
"Two words are made prominent in each lesson. Their pronunciation, division into syllables, derivation, phonetic properties, oral and written spelling and meaning, are all to be made clear to pupils.
"The teaching of a new word may be done by using it in a sentence; by definition or description; by giving a synonym or the antonym; by illustration with object, action or drawing; and by etymology.
"Each lesson should have also from eight to 20 subordinate words taken from textbook or composition exercises.... Frequent supplementary dictation, word-building and phonic exercises should be given. Spell much orally.... Teach a little daily, test thoroughly, drill intensively, and follow up words misspelled persistently."
In most respects the