Book Description

Excerpt from Report of Ogden Public School Survey Commission A year ago a proposal was made in Ogden for vitalizing the schools by reorganizing them on an industrial plan, having a half day of academic and a half day of industrial, social and physical work, and in certain cases boys and girls were to be excused from the industrial half day of the school to take their industrial work in some of the approved industries of our city on the co-operative plan, on the theory that the real, practical work of life should be an essential part of our educational system; provided that it shall be thoroughly supervised and that the intellectual, physical and social progress of the student shall not in any way be hampered. Some kinds of work have little or no educational value. Other kinds are injurious to body, mind and morals. The child should be protected by the school from entering such employments. It was also thought that the educational value of earning and saving money was an important thing in the training of young people. This plan was intended to make full use of the school plant all the time - day and evening - the year around. The proper mingling of work, play and study can lengthen the school day without injury to any child, while under the present system the present day is too long. Cramming the child with a mass of unrelated, disconnected, disassociated, meaningless abstract formalities is making a generation of mental dyspeptics unfitted for usefulness. The benefits of longer supervision in related activities are numerous. The rights of every individual child should be safeguarded, and in some cases it is known that the home can provide better training than the school for a part of the time each day. Great care should be taken by the school officers, however, that careless and grasping parents should not exploit their children for mere financial gain. Junior and Senior High School boys and girls may be directed by the home, with great profit, in housekeeping, dairying, cabinet making, gardening and many other occupations, as well as in private lessons in art, music, languages, elocution, etc. The daily program should be such that the book-minded or the hand-minded child can be cared for and his choice under guidance should be encouraged. Many boys and girls, too, could be brought back to school for the academic half day, who are compelled to leave school, continuing the industrial half day away from the school plant. If their necessities demand their full time outside, their academic training could be obtained in the evening school, provided in the Social Center. The Social Center. Every school building should be kept open all day and evening. Work, play and study should be the program of each session. Running a school system should receive as much business sense as any other big business. Any other business, after having built a large expensive plant would want to use that plant to its capacity. School buildings are generally used five and a half hours a day, five days in a week, nine months in the year, and stand idle the other half of the time. Why this appalling loss? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.