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Reform of NYC Public Schools, 1896

Public School No. 188 is the largest public school in the world. In the great play yard in the central court the children were romping about so noisily that the two men had to cease talking. They could not hear each other. Then, of a sudden a gong sounded, and the hubbub was hushed. The boys on one side of the yard, the girls on the other, fell into lines, each representing a class and slowly and noiselessly, save for the shuffling of feet, they marched away to their classrooms. "You won't believe it, perhaps, I)tit that little army you have just seen contained five thousand children, or as many as attend all the schools in the entire State of Nevada. Under this roof there are a quarter of a thousand more pupils than in all Columbia University. Indeed, there are seats enough for the students of Yale, Brown, Amherst, and Bowdoin combined."

Following the boys upstairs, the two men met Mr. Mandel, the principal, whose face brightened as soon as lie was asked if they might visit the classrooms. "I guess you won't have time to go into all of them," he said, as he led the way. "You see there are ninety six altogether." Turning through a door the visitors found themselves confronted by forty lads poring over a history lesson. In the teacher's chair a boy had been left in charge. "A small sized republic," remarked the principal. "You see how well they can govern themselves. They have elected this president to administer affairs in the interim."

They do maintain good decorum to be sure," said the writer, "although there must be some tough rowdies among them. They doubtless go to school because they have to, and so when they get through the slums will swallow them up again. I suppose there is hardly one of them who has in view any definite vocation."

"I'd be glad to take a census of the class to find out," said Mr. Mandel, and, turning to the teacher, who had just returned, he asked him to call the roll. Of the thirty-nine present, only one was undecided its to his life work. Eleven wanted to take up various business careers. Nine intended to be lawyers, six civil engineers, three dentists, three doctors, two teachers and one each for the various callings of mechanic, engraver, designer of clothes, and electrical engineer. Of the thirty nine, the majority were Jewish. On inquiry the teacher found that the reason why six had chosen civil engineering was because they had watched the construction of the Williamsburg Bridge. The engineers who directed the work, who "bossed the dagoes," as one Irish boy put it, had made many of the youth of the neighborhood ambitious to rise to a like position of wisdom and authority. The average age of the boys of this class was fourteen. They will be graduated next February.

Across the hall the visitors found a class hard at work at English composition. It was made up of pupils who contrasted strongly with those they had just left. They were four or five years younger and showed more clearly the influence of their home life. Their faces were dirtier, their hair more snarled, and their clothes more ragged.

"We haven't had as much opportunity to bring out what is best in these little fellows," Mr. Mandel explained.

The subject of the essays was, "My Vacation." And when they were handed in they showed that nearly all of the class had spent the summer in East Side streets. One spoke of an "outing" in Central Park, and another had gone "camping" in the Bronx. A third devoted his whole composition to a baseball game. It, to him, was the most important happening in the last two months. The teacher read it aloud as follows: "During vacation our team and another team arranged a game of baseball. It was to be played at 6th Street block for $2. The game started and it was the ending of the fifth inning. The score was in favor of the other side, 7 to 0 when the pitcher went to pieces and we hit him for ten runs and won out by 10 to 7."

A hand was waving wildly in the rear of the room, and as soon as its possessor was recognized by the teacher a voice resounded shrilly, "I tell youse about dat game. I wuz on the side dat lost. Each side put up a dollar. We wuz beat cuz dey bribed our pitcher."

The writer of the composition hotly denounced this as a falsehood, and words would have led to blows had not the teacher interposed. Meanwhile the sociologist nodded his head thoughtfully and to his, friend muttered, "No wonder our politics and commercial methods corrupt. Ah, ha, I'll put this in my book."

"No city in the world spends as much as New York for education. Even London takes second rank," wits the response. "With 2,000,000 more inhabitants London appropriates several million dollars less a year for schools than we do. In 1900 that city spent for 500,000 pupils $16,988,000, or a little more than two thirds New York's appropriation for an enrollment of 555,000." Mr. Mandel brought the conversation to a close by leading the visitors into another classroom. "This is the foreign class of boys," he explained. "Here we take them almost out of the steamships. When we have sifted this class thoroughly, we will leave not one who can speak the English language." As it happened, the teacher had just asked all those who could speak English to stand up. Only two rose to their feet. One, a bright-eyed, black-haired lad of fourteen, said he had just arrived from Jerusalem but that he had studied English there in an institution called the Zionist Normal Polytechnic Kindergarten College. He said he could also speak German, Hebrew, Spanish, and Arabic. The second pupil said he had picked up enough English to understand most Americans because of having lived two months in London. He was a Jew boy also, and was born in Russia. The two lads were told that they would be assigned to other classes, and then the lesson proceeded. The teacher was endeavoring to make her pupils understand the words "open" and "shut." She would go to the door, and swinging it back, say, "I open the door." Closing it she would say, "I shut the door." Then, retreating to her chair, she would point to some pupil and give the command, "You, open the door." This done, she would address another boy with, "You, shut the door." After the class had apparently caught the meaning of the new words, the teacher put it to another test. Nodding to a little Hungarian and closing the door at the same time, she asked, "Now what do I do?" In his reply the lad showed that he had already imbibed a little English from his East Side playmates, for he shouted at the top of his voice, "You shut up. You shut up."

Mr. Mandel accordingly turned the visitors over to his assistant, Mr. Radik, as guide, who, as he led the way, chanced to say: "I suppose you have inspected our carpenter shop. We are quite proud of it."

"No, we haven't seen that," replied the author. "Who works in it, the janitor'?"

Mr. Radik was so taken back by this utterance that he grasped the first door knob he came to as if for support. Then he explained that the carpenter shop was a regular classroom, where all the students had instruction the last two years of their course. Opening the door, he disclosed to view a score of boys each at a bench and at work making tabourets. "The finished product will adorn many an East Side parlor," said Mr. Radik. "Some of them show an unusually high degree of skill. Each student works from an original design. There is no opportunity for one to copy from another."

The class of foreign girls was hard at work learning such words as "head," "hand," and "foot" when the visitors arrived. After this drill the teacher took a crayon and, holding it up, said slowly, "I have a piece of chalk." Pupil after pupil took the chalk and repeated the same words. "Now," said the teacher, "I am going back to our old lesson," and patting the head of a little girl, she asked her what part of the body it was. With a serious, almost sad, look the child faced the class, and tapping her curly locks she said, "Dis ist my piece of head." But her classmates never showed the slightest trace of a smile. Even if any of them noticed the mistake, the language was all too foreign and too strange to contain any humor.

All of the thirty-three girls were Hebrews. Twenty were born in Russia, seven in Hungary, and six in Austria. Half had arrived in New York in the last six months and had fled from Russia to escape the torch and the saber. Several of the girls were thirteen or fourteen years old, and, according to their teachers, they were proficient in arithmetic and Russian literature. "But do they appreciate the opportunities of this country?" asked the author. "Ask that little one whom you call Rosie how she regards America." In Yiddish the teacher asked the question, and Rosie's answer, translated, was, "I love sweet America. They are kind to me here."