Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/334

 3l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

school buildings in the poorest neighborhoods. Their appeal for funds brought 85,000 to their treasury to maintain vacation schools. Many more children applied than could be admitted, and some came long distances to the school. The age limit was from five to fifteen, corresponding to the grades from kinder- ten to first grammar. No text-books were used. From the beginning the A. I. C. P. had felt it was the duty of the board of education to maintain these schools, and it conducted them under its auspices only as an object-lesson to prove their need and usefulness. In 1897 the school board, after careful consid- eration, adopted vacation schools as a part of the public-school system of New York city, and appropriated gio,ooo for their maintenance this summer, estimating g 1,000 as the cost of each school.

This year ten schools have been opened by the board of edu- cation and are under the supervision of Superintendent Stewart. In each school there are a few expert teachers, but the majority are normal-school students, quite inexperienced, and the work naturally shows the result of their well-meant, but not always successful, efforts. The superintendent expressed himself as satisfied that it would be unwise another year to have so many inexperienced teachers.

In one school which I visited the principal was laying most stress on organized play, and was training the boys in companies for a tournament in hand-tennis, endeavoring to rouse their ambi- tion to attain the highest degree of skill. The girls were having games and dances, and were utilizing the small space allotted to them in a really remarkable way. It struck me as an excellent training to teach them how to use the small spaces in their home and the street. At the same time they were learning beautiful poems, and training their voices to pleasant, modulated tones. Singing was incidental and scarcely emphasized sufficiently to be called a study.

In another school a skillful teacher, who had filled the room with interesting objects from nature, was conducting a nature- study lesson, in which the children were thoroughly interested. They had planted peanuts, and were watching the growth and