The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-01-08
MODERN SCHOOLS
 WORTH IS SHOWN

(Continued from Page One. charge of the Unquowa. schooE He is | an expert in educational methods, a | graduate of Keuka. College, and earn ed his M. A. at Columbia University | studying school organization and sn- RfeaV1slons per aons He ,s was a Prlnelpai T a, TOT for four years at Keuka institute; a | Superintendent for two years at Iii eonderoga, N. Y., and for two years in charge of the school in PaSSaic. You see, it was a double prob | lem,' continued MT. Churchill "It was desirable to house as many as possible and at the same time give the children a varied type of work To have them use their head and hands both and at the same time make the day interesting. new line and a school was built with Twenty ordinary class rooms which would seat forty pupils each or 800 in the whole building. As matter 1 of fact all the time I was there I | had 1900, or just double."
 'How did we do it? It was sim pie Tn addition to the class rooms the building had a large auditoriui. two gymnasiun1s, a print shop, Q ~
 chine shop, a weaving shop, a wood working shop, two rooms for draw 1hS-mechanica1 drawing for the boys and design for the girls-two and one for studies in the elementary 1 science of common things, such as | the gas meter and the electric light; teaching children to understand the 1 simple things which they see around 1 them. Altogether there were special roomsroons enough to keep 500 children busy.
 At that time 500 children began the day in the class rooms and another 1 800 in the special rooms. We ran that way for two periods and then | changed about. This did not take l than mi. Tl,S7a A | pupils which had been in the class rooms were filing down one stairway | to the special rooms those who had | been in the special rooms were filing up another stairway to the class rooms Where they took out their books and went to york;
 At 11:20 a. m. all of the pupils fin the shops and special rooms went to | their lunch. At 12:2O D. m they were back again ready to take the 1 places of these in the class rooms 1 who then went to lunch, returning at l:2e D. m. and filling the shops again. i Ihefe-Was one other exchange during the afternoon and the day closed at 4 D. m.
 This made a day of six hours and twenty minutes with the work divid- eu as follows: Book work 22O minutes; gymnasium, 40 minutes: an. ditor1un, 40 minutes, and shop work, so minutes. In the auditorium we took up civic work, had public speak NA''CNHoSo group singing and once a week had moving pictures for which we were equipped with an outfit of our own"
 Ihe population in the section served by this school was at least ninety per cent. foreigners and I have often thought that there was no Anler1canlzatIon work done for them more important, or that showed bet i ter results than the cooking instruc- tlon. Those girls showed the great est interest in the course and were taught to cook American dishes and set the table and serve in the Ameri- can 1ashlon- This knowledge was carried into the home and could not put help effect a change there, I have often had girls come to me and say, MT. Churchill, we had company yesterday and got the dinner and set school.''' HI
 Our shops were not simpfy theo- feuGaI. They were intensely prac- ucal and the boys got ten weeks in each of them during the year. The print shop did every bit of printing
 used by the Board of Education a4rms' TOT booklets, blanks. report cards, which had fifteen thousand children
 to care for so you can judge how to do.''
 Tn the weaving shop we devo+ad
 our attention largely to making tow
 cling and turned out a quantity suf- llcient to take care of the needs of
 all the schools in the citv and this
 was no small amount for, in our own
 school, we had 500 towels in use all the une Tn eweaVing shop was an , adoption of methods to, local needs.
 Passaic is a textile town and while if was not the intention of the school to
 try and plan a course purposeIy to fit 1 boys to enter the factories this
 course was an aid to those who did
 go into them. I recall one boy l WnOSe knOwlpGoa nf 1ni
 and care of a loom enabled him to get a weaver's full pay four weeks af-
 ter he went into the factory
 Ihe boys in the woodworking
 the building, did repairing, and built many things for themselves beside Another school in Passaic needed fifty manual training benches equip to my school; the boys made the benches and then in the machine sfoI
 they turned up the screws for the
 to the school complete, ready for use
 and all of the work done in oul
 building.'
 "There is one danger to be guard
 ed against in a school of this kinC ! and that is that too much emphasis , will be laid on the mechanical work and tn educational work suffer 1T f consequence. At Passaic we laid the emphasis strongly on the educationa 
 that was can be judged from the fac that in an industrial town, with al
 most all the parents foreigners-son1t
 thirty to forty per cent. of the par
 ents could neither reao or write Eng
 fish and probably fifteen per cent 5 could not speak it-out of graduat ing class of 120 we sent ninety-fv, , to the high school. Most of thes = children had no home help. Man!
 of them did not even have a quie ' room in which to study. I think i . is quite a remarkable record 'Now, what about the saving, MT , Churchi1?'' the Times man suggest ed.
 t"The saving was on rooms ant = teachers he replied. eff we hat
 attempted to give all that special worl
 with the old type of school it woulC
 have been much more expensive
 would have required fifty per cent
 more room a1fd not less than twenty
 five per cent more teachers. Yo1
 see the principal gain was in bein: able to give the children a. mOderl