« p. 321-327: Remarks on Hull House and the South Park
A Day in the Chicago Schools
p. 327-338
In front of Hull House at eight o’clock in the morning, we pick up one Miss Starr Kellogg, the overseer of a public school district. We entrust ourselves to her leadership on a tour of the public and private grammar schools and high schools, and also the trade schools west of Chicago.
In the company of this wonderful American, I experienced (along with my friend) one of my great American days, a day whose memory will remain fresh and living to me for a very long time. This day in the Chicago schools was marked by deep emotion and good cheer.
At Rowland School, we begin with the kindgergarten, where even the smallest of them dance in the ring-around-the-roses and where children with beaming faces build little piles of sand, where they plant Indian wigwams, trees and buffalo in-between the trees. We make our way through rooms where children paint small pictures of all sorts on their desks using colored chalk. We come to a room where little ones about six or seven years old analyze an autumn landscape. One after the other, boys and girls step in front of the teacher and list two things which make it a pretty picture of autumn: a yellow treetop and a white cloud behind it, or a crow sitting in a harvested field. In the next room, children stand in front of an open window, bent forward and breathing in and out. Ah, now we can see how the methods of Germany’s Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Pestalozzi have come to America. When we enter a room holding about fifty or sixty children from ten to twelve years old, the lessons stop. At Miss Kellogg’s command, the class stands up and sings in unison the Chicago Fire Song. Gestures accompany the words. The words fall one at a time, clearly pronounced, crystals from the pure lips of children. These are foreign children, children of Russian Jews, Bohemians, Greeks, Sicilians. The teacher, like a good conductor of a large orchestra, listens for every word pronounced falsely, every emphasis on the wrong syllable. Here the children of far, foreign lands are brought into the language of the nation, the mighty English language. Here, in these rooms, sharp and formidable tools are forged so that these awakening children will soon be able to serve in the struggle for bread and freedom.
The Chicago Fire Song rings out melodically. The rhythm of the vereses shoots up and down. A crescendo:
Fire -- Fire -- FIRE!
and the small faces, lifted up high, burn in childlile excitement at the thought of the blazing city!
But it’s a lengthy song and we have to leave. Miss Kellogg has the children sit down, and now they have to stand up according to nationality, in order to show how many were born here and how many in their old homelands. Of the fifty, only ten were born in America, while the others came over not too long ago. There are two German children among the fifty, and the others are Bohemians, Polish Jews, Lithuanians, Serbians, Greeks, Irish, Sicilians. As they all sit down again, Miss Kellogg steps in front of them and calls out loudly in the schoolroom.
“And now, children, say, what are we all?” The children leap up, as if they were shot through with electricity, their high voices cheerful and shouting and rejoicing: “Americans!”
In the American school schedule, an hour of instruction belongs to civics. In Germany we would call it Bürgerrechte. We saw one such civics hour at Cooper School. There haven’t been many hours during my stay in America which have given me such rich instruction about America and such deep, constant love for this land, its people and its spirit.
As we walk in, a small, thirteen-year-old Bohemian stands and speaks from memory.
His memory explains “the law for recalling such judges who irresponsibly abuse their office and their unbounded power for the support of corrupt corporations, railroads and trusts against the injured and defenseless private citizen.” These given laws are a great part of the progressive politics in America. Here is another law, that of the referendum, word for word: “Bills should be presented to the people for their final acceptance or refusal.” And here is the initiative word for word: “The law should be put before the people, so that they can make suggestions to be applied to the law.” -- Laws aiming to achieve “direct legislation through the people” have already been passed in many states of the Union, chiefly in those west of the Mississippi. The small Bohemian lectures on the referendum and the initiative. Finally, the little kid wraps up his speech as follows: “We must make sure that the senators are chosen from the people! There is nothing the people need more than direct legislation!” And then he sits back down in his seat!
It knocks you upside the head. What the heck, are we in Congress in Washington, or are we in a grammar school? You almost want to take the little one by the ear and knock him around a bit as you ask: “How do you know what the people need or don’t need? Go play with your marbles, you little know-it-all!”
But then you sit up and take notice when a small eleven-year-old girl stands up and lists the states where women possess the right to vote. The child names the state Colorado, and the teacher asks the class: “What is the capital of Colorado!”
“Denver!” yells the class.
“Who lives in Denver?” asks the teacher.
And then I hear the children’s voices call the name that brings tears to my eyes, honest Ben’s name, the name of the gentle judge of the children of Colorado.
“Ben Lindsey!” cry the children.
And they stand up, one after the other, and report the deeds of the Friend of the Children. A small young boy knows enough to say that Lindsey owes it to the voting women of Colorado that he, who has fought with the political parties, has been allowed to remain in office. (Is the teacher pushing suffragette propaganda? What of it? All the better if she does!) A different small boy reports seriously and objectively, with a calm and earnest voice, what the judge of the children of Denver has done. He talks about the social services for the orphans, about the supervision to help the little street urchins, about the swimming pool in the poor district, not to mention how broad and deep the pool is, and the material it’s built of: concrete.
A child stands up and talks about the laws in Oregon, in Tennessee, in Wyoming. Another adds to the report and talks about the South Park of Chicago and its arrangements.
Gradually, the connection between politics and education is proven to me. I begin to understand how American children are prepared for public life, how to be part of that life when they become adults. I see: this is not just a series of history lessons leading up to the present. This is the true history lesson. I see: this is what Americans call the national feeling, and this is how it is awakened. I see: you don’t have to start with the Merovingians to show a child he belongs to a great nation. (You don’t even have to start with the Puritans!) I see clearly the borderline between national feeling and the feeling for humanity. I listen eagerly to what the children say. I learn much in this hour lesson, and I feel much because of it.
Miss Kellogg tells us quietly, as the lesson continues, that the children in this class, out of their own initiative, filed a petitiion to the city authorities to protect and preserve two trees on their playground which were scheduled to be cut down. That they gathered together to protest against the sponsor of a notrious, hated and criminal city ordinance. That they took the time to write to Washington for official reports and brochures whenever a bill on the agenda caught their interest. These American children . . .
The hour came to an end, our time was up. Miss Kellogg led a small conversation.
“Children! Look around! If it seems to you that anything needs improvement, if there’s something that seems unjust to you, tell us right here! Think about how it could be made better, and tell us this too, and loudly! But make sure you know why it is unjust and wicked. Look around, children!”
“All right, Miss Kellogg, we will!“ say the children.
Then the kind teacher led the class in a small act of international hospitality.
“Children!” she said. “Today we have the pleasure of greeting a visitor from Berlin. Now we’re going to stand up and sing Wacht am Rhein.”
And there we stood, Miss Kellogg, my friend and I, with the children singing Wacht am Rhein!
Stand fast and true
And guard the German Rhine!
“Thank you!” I said to teacher, once we were outside the door. “Thank you in the name of Wilhelm II! Don’t think I’m being ungrateful when I say, and I say it sincerely, that I much would have preferred the Marseillaise . . . but not the French national anthem, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, you’re a socialist, aren’t you?” the teacher says.
“Well, not exactly, something in that line!” I respond.
“All right, now come along. I’ll show you something!”
We go to the school library. Spread out on a long table are monthly and weekly magazines and daily papers. Newspapers from every political party. I see some issues of Boston’s Twentieth Century and New York’s Call, the leading monthly magazine and daily paper for American socialists.
“We read a lot of political articles with the children,” the teacher says. “If I find a political event in a socialist paper and I think it’s okay, the children and I read it from the socialist paper . . .”
I see myself in Germany, standing in a Berlin school as the teacher reads an article to the children out of the Vorwärts or the Arbeiterzeitung, out of the Neuen Zeit!!
I see it now: the American school is not an institution where children are stuffed with all sorts of facts they’ll never remember, which they’ll probably have to forget if they want to become human beings. Instead, it is an instrument which helps children become Americans, that is to say, political beings, that is to say, citizens of the world. All the children of foreign nations are coming to this melting pot, out of which the hard metal of the future of America, the future of the world, is brought up.
All the children of oppressed people, the Russian Jews, the Poles, the Irish, the Bohemians, the Finns, they are all brought up to believe that they are people with rights. They didn’t know this in the old country. Their parents never learned anything new. This education is, I believe, at least as important as the multiplication tables and the alphabet.
This single doctrine is kindled and warmed in the children: You are people and you have rights. This is taught at the same time with this doctrine: You are American! And suddenly it all becomes clear in these little brains: Human Rights = America.
Gradually, I lose all my prejudices against American children being taught by women. There are so many admirable features in the public life of America, which are due to the direct political influence of women. It is inconceivable that social services for poor mothers during pregnancy, for illegitimate children and orphans, that all those welfare insitutions which benefit women and children could still be here without the drastic influence of the fabric of society. Even though women are, for the time being, confined to their traditional domestic domain, they imperceptibly change the interconnections of the modern order, so that the future will be less dreary and modern times will seem somewhat freer and easier from day to day.
Female American teachers understand their jobs not simply as a way to earn a living, but instead they are deeply moved by motherly instinct and love for the children. They take so much warmth, goodness and kindness into the classroom, that you are swept along in a wave of deep sympathy and unconscious outrage -- you suddenly begin thinking of your own childhood years, when your were lost among a horde of imaginary tyrants and opinionated fools. For us, when we look at our children in the middle class and their lives, the male teacher takes over as the authority of learning. Because of this, the young boy learns to despise women very early as being insufficient and useless for the serious things of the world. But the American boy learns from a female teacher on the same schoolbench where the young girls sit, and up until his fourteenth year he learns what is prescribed for him from the Board of Education. A spirit of respect for the opposite sex is nourished in him, a respect which European boys achieve only by any number of detours. The talents developed in American boys mostly wither away in Europe. By the simplest means, American learn the sense of the word equality. Where else would equality begin than in the equal treatment of both sexes?
We were shown all sorts of fine exercises that day. Before we left the abovementioned school, the director rang the fire alarm by attacking the bell three times at specific intervals. A little piano stood in front of us in the hallway. The first human to arrive according to plan was a young teacher, who quickly sat down at the piano and began playing one of John Phillip Sousa’s lively marches. The whole building came to life. Two small boys and two tall girls stormed down the stairs and stood on the middle of the last step. These were the school officers, selected functionaries from each class. (They supervise the concerns within the class, but also in the auditorium, the library and the playground. Each school represents a small republic, with a student president, a court of justice and political affiliations, and all the positions are named after political positions in the city and Washington.)
From upstairs all the classes appear, led by the teachers; they march in rows in time to the lively Sousa march; we look at the clock. In scarcely three minutes, all 540 children are safe and sound in the courtyard downstairs. --
Dance, gymnastics and group exercises of all sorts take up a lot of space in American education. Because there’s no such thing as compulsory military service here, the class is not a preschool of military discipline, but instead a proper method of making the body supple for future competition.
In one of the largest trade schools in Chicago, after we walked through the various shops, the work stations for carpenters, machinists and electricians, we sit in a classroom where sixteen to twenty-year-old students go through the finer points of American conditioning. The teacher talked to them in a wonderful, dreamlike, free and stimulating conversation. When the telephone rang (in the classroom!), the student sitting next to the receiver immediately hallos into the appartus, and we and everyone else in the class hears it: the foreigners of honorable distinction are summoned to a large general meeting downstairs in the auditorium.
We meet Miss Kellogg in front of the door. All of the classes in the building have been interrupted. The teachers stand up from their desks, the conveyor belts in the shops stand still. Led by Miss Kellogg and the principal of the school, we walk into the auditorium, where the gallery is full to bursting. We are greeted by numbing applause and walk through the 1500 students up to the stage, where chairs are waiting for us. The director introduces us to the students. More applause. We come from Berlin, the capital of the mighty German empire. Applause. (Thank you, thank you in the name of the Lord Mayors!) Then we are allowed to sit back down. The elected cheerleaders step into place. Both of the young people are true athletes. They take off their jackets so they can move around more freely. Legs apart, they stand and swing their arms with great windmill motions in their upper body. While in swing, they shove both arms down towards the ground. The College-Yell rings out, the Indian yell of the school is shouted in time as the athletes lead everyone on with gestures. 1500 young throats yell:
“Rah! Rah! Rah! -- Reh! Reh!” --
Then the name of the school. --
Then a whistle to go silent. --
From hereon the school song starts playing, a hymn whose text consists entirely of the name of the school. Because the school is named after its founder and the name of the founder, in German, is approximately Friedrich Wilhelm Schulze, the hymn isn’t really all that rousing.
And now the baseball champions, the football champions, the lightweights, the bantamweights and heavyweights walk one at a time up the ramp. They speak to the crowd about the hopes of their teams and themselves for the next competition. About why they win and how they practice to make up for their losses. More applause rewards these explanations. At our side, the principal beams for pleasure and pride. Miss Kellogg’s lovely and good-natured face beams for pleasure and pride.
Clapping accompanies us back down the rows. We say goodbye to the students, the principal, the professors, our kind guide. -- We stand outside on the street, my friend and I, and we look around:
“Theatrics!” my friend says. “Did you see the time? This little demonstration lasted from three o’clock until seven minutes before four! Fifty-three minutes of a schoolday are spent in games.” ------
And what if it is? Their lungs get some work with their Rah Rah Rah. In-between work and more work, they get an hour’s worth of spoken sport. They have given their friendship, in their own way, to two complete strangers. They didn’t put on a play, they were just sharing their joy. Where is it written, that the lesson is more important than the break between classes? That the conveyor belt outranks the baseball field? That strong, young cosmoplitans between sixteen and twenty years old should hold the lightweight champion in lesser importance than the Consitution and all the statements of the universe from Galileo to Ostwald?
Without a doubt, in America you learn fewer things than in Europe. But there’s something else I know. When it comes to all those schoolboy’s thoughts of suicide which are so common in Europe, I never heard a word of it in America.