buildings, but the authorities were persuaded to turn them over to the school for its use. The school now found itself the possessor of a large playground and of three frame tenements in the worst possible condition, the board having stipulated that this added property should mean no further expense to the city after its purchase and the cleaning up of the grounds. It was decided to use the buildings for social and industrial purposes. One of them was fitted up by the pupils and neighbors interested as a manual training building. In this there is a carpenter shop, a sewing room, and a room for the class in shoemaking. Each grade devotes a regular number of hours a week to hand work, and has an opportunity to join other industrial classes after school. The immediate practical appeal of the work is never lost sight of, and the work is arranged to fit the needs of the individual pupil.
The carpenter shop is open all day, and there are classes for the girls as well as for the boys. Pupils are at liberty to go into the shop and work whenever they have any free time. The work is not confined to exercises to train the child in the use of tools, but each pupil makes something that he needs or wants, something that will be of real use to him. Processes and control of tools are taught the pupil by means of the piece of work he is doing. This is the keynote to all the industrial work done in the school. The more remote end of teaching the child processes which will be useful to him later is not lost sight of, but material is always used which has some immediate value to the child or to the school. The boys have learned carpentry work by making things that were needed in the school building—tables, cupboards, and bookcases—and by doing some of the repairing on the building. The girls have learned to sew by making clothes for themselves, for their brothers and sisters, and by making curtains and linen for the school. They have learned to cook by making soup for hot lunches for the school and the neighbors, and by cooking a whole meal for their own class. Besides the cooking and sewing department for the girls, there is a class in millinery and in crocheting. These two classes are conducted from the commercial point of view, to teach the girls to do something that will enable them to earn some money. In the millinery class the pupils start by making and trimming hats for themselves, so that they learn the different processes in the trade. The girls in the class who show the most skill are then allowed to take orders from friends and neighbors and trim or make hats for them. Besides the cost of the material the buyer pays a very small sum for the work, and this goes into the school treasury. The millinery class has done quite a business in the neighborhood, and turned out some very successful hats. Crocheting is taught as a trade, and any girl who wishes to make some money has an opportunity to learn how to make lace, table doilies, and all sorts of crocheted articles, like hoods, etc., which will sell. As the girls are learning, they are working on something which they can use for themselves or in their homes.
The work for the boys is arranged in the same way. Besides the carpenter work and the repairing there is a boys’ cooking class, a shoe-repairing department, and a tailoring shop. The cooking class is even more popular with the boys than with the girls. In the shoe-repairing shop, which holds classes after school hours, the boys learn to mend their own shoes. A professional cobbler is the teacher, and the mending must be neatly done. The boys begin work on their own old shoes and as they progress in skill, are allowed to bring shoes from home to be repaired, or to mend for the girls and for the younger boys in the school, who, however, pay a small sum for the work. The tailoring department is run on the same plan, to teach habits of personal neatness and of industry through giving the pupils work that results in neatness and gives some manual skill and control of tools. The class is taught by a tailor, and the boys learn to patch and mend their own clothes, as well as to sponge and press them. Attendance is entirely voluntary, and the class meets after the regular school work is over. Knowing how to keep themselves tidy has resulted in a very marked improvement in the appearance and habits of the boys in the class, and has had an influence not only on the whole school, but on the neighborhood as well. The boys no longer resent the attempts of the teachers to influence them towards cleanliness and neatness, for they have become conscious of the advantages of these habits.
The cooking and domestic science classes are taught in one of the tenements turned over to the school without having been repaired, although the cooking equipment was supplied by the city. All the other work on the building—cleaning, painting, repairing, furnishing, and decorating—was done and paid for by the pupils of the school with help from the neighborhood clubs that use the building. There is a large cooking room, a demonstration dining and sitting room, and two bedrooms. The girls not only learn to cook real meals, but they learn how to serve them, and then how to take care of the demonstration house. The domestic science classes include lessons in buying, the comparative costs and values of food, something of food chemistry and values, and large quantity cooking. This work is done in connection with the soup kitchen. A group of girls have charge of the kitchen long enough to really learn about the work. They plan the menu and do the buying, cooking and serving of the soup, selling it for three cents a bowl to the pupils of the school and to neighbors. They keep all the accounts and not only have to make all their expenses, but are expected to make some profit for the use of the school as well. They have made enough profit in one year to furnish most of the demonstration house. Aside from teaching how to do housework thoroughly and easily, the purpose of the house is to furnish an example of what can be done to make one of the regular frame tenements of the district comfortable and attractive, without more expense than most of the people now put into their homes. The house is very simply furnished, with cheap and strong things, in plain colors that are easily kept clean; the painting and papering was done by the pupils. The sewing class has made all the curtains and linen for the house, and made furniture by covering boxes, etc. Besides the class work that goes on in the building, the rooms are also used as a social center for the girls of the school.
The third building left standing on the ground purchased by the school authorities has been turned into a boys’ club house. There is a gymnasium, two club rooms, and a shower bath room. This house was in exceedingly bad condition when it became part of the school property, and there was no money and not much lumber available to repair it. But the boys of the school wanted the club house, and were not discouraged because it was not given to them all finished. They started out, as they had done in the manual training and domestic science buildings, to do the work themselves. Under the direction of the manual training teacher, they pulled off old paper and broken plaster, tore up uneven floors and took out partitions. Then they laid floors, put in woodwork and painted it, rehung doors, mended windows, and made furniture and gymnastic apparatus. When there was a job they could not do, such as the plastering and plumbing, they went among their friends and asked for money or help in work. Plumbers and plasterers who lived near the school came in and gave their time and work to help the boys get their building in order, and other friends gave enough money to finish the work. Men in the neighborhood dug a long ditch through the school grounds for sewerage connections. Gradually they are adding to the gymnasium apparatus and to the simple bathing facilities, while cleaning and keeping up the painting continue to supply opportunities for useful work.
As already indicated, the reflex effect upon homes in the vicinity has been marked. The school board had intended to wreck the three tenement houses when they bought the land; but Mr. Valentine saw the opportunity to give the community something which they needed, and at the same time to arouse a spirit of coöperation and interest among both parents and pupils in place of the old spirit of distrust and antagonism, when he persuaded the board to turn the buildings over to the school. He told the pupils what could be done with them and asked for their help in doing it. He got a hearty response at once, and so went out into the district with the children and told their parents what he proposed to do and asked for help. He got the same generous response for the first building, the manual training shops, as for the boys’ club. Besides the time and material which the skilled workers of the community have contributed, the community has given $350 in cash, no small sum for people as poor as they are. The value of the work being done in these buildings and of the training the boys have had in making them over, is proved by the fact that the community and the boys themselves wanted the work badly enough to pay for getting it in money and work. While it has undoubtedly been a struggle for the school and the district to contribute so much, the benefit to the school and to the community has been greater just because of these sacrifices and struggles. The work has made over the relations between
