School Clubs In a few of the schools visited, boys and girls organize clubs to provide opportunities for children interested in the same or similar things to work together and to have more social activities than they otherwise would have. School clubs are more homogeneous groups than school councils. A club usually consists of members who are interested in a single subject, such as birds or art. Any school can have enough clubs for every child to belong to at least one. The membership of a council in any school is too restricted for every child to be a member. The major goal is to promote the welfare of the school, whereas the goal of a school club is more likely to be personal interest or satisfaction. Some school student councils have a supervisory relation to the school clubs as in certain Maryland and Massachusetts schools where clubs operate under the student council. Variety of Interests Among the more common school clubs are the Junior Audubon Clubs, garden clubs, science clubs, art clubs, and Junior Conservation Clubs. Others include: Newspaper club Folk dance club Hobby club Handcraft club Junior Red Cross Book club Stamp club Little theater club Dramatics club Pen pals Poetry club Teen-age club Good breakfast club In a Wisconsin city are several of the clubs listed above. In the clubs in these schools, older children work with younger boys and girls, help them find interests, and decide on things to do. In this city, the Teen-Age Club is the only one whose members are limited to the older children. Among the problems that the teenagers discuss are: "How do you get people to like you?" "Should kids our ages hold hands in the movies?" "Should we be allowed to go out on week nights?" "How late should kids our ages stay out?" Each club has its own chairman and secretary. An over-all council provides general guidance and correlates club activities. The chairman of the council is selected by the student body. All-Year Clubs An Ohio school system arranges for pupils who wish to have garden activities either on the school ground or in their own yards. Objectives of the program are improvement of leisure-time activities, promotion of worth-while hobbies, and the beautifying of garden and lawns. The general plan is for the principal of one of the schools who is particularly interested to have charge of the garden project. Garden clubs are organized in the separate schools and are usually composed of members from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Each school is expected to choose a garden sponsor. During 1 year, garden clubs were organized in 67 elementary and junior high schools, and 3,033 children were registered. The largest club had 107 members, the smallest 10 members. These dogs are guests of the school hobby club, Fort Wayne Ind. Children learn Garden club activities are kept up during the summer under the supervision of the garden director. Summer programs include garden hikes, garden exhibits, and visits from the school sponsor to gardens in each school district. Home gardens receive special emphasis. In some homes of low economic level, home gardens under the sponsorship of the school have added greatly to family food supplies. Community Influences on Clubs In a certain city, a sixth grade has a student group known as "The Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Club" with regularly elected officers and the usual election campaign activities. Among other activities of the club are a literary program presented to the sixth grade or the school by a small group of sixth-grade children, Junior Red Cross work, and responsibility for the central library of the entire school. The school also has glee clubs. The groups give plays, talks, and musical numbers for social and civic groups interested in such activities, as well as for school groups. Other schools, too, have clubs adapted to local needs and resources. In one community, where adults have a hobby group, the children also have hobby clubs. In a city with facilities for swimming, elementary grades have a swimming club. In a rural school, a bird club flourishes. Generally speaking, school clubs add interest and worth to the school program by providing means for: (a) Interesting activities for leisure time. (b) Development of interests that sometimes carry (c) Enriched opportunities for boys and girls to learn (d) Opportunities for boys and girls to work with chil- (e) Opportunities to give coordinated service to one's In many of the schools visited, children have the curriculum that helps them with the problems of everyday life. New lessons are selected to fit real problems. Consequently, the children learn and study in natural situations. Sometimes the subject matter children use has been organized in fields of science, social studies, and language arts; sometimes as areas of experience, such as home living, conservation, community life, and world understanding. One supervisor says, "We have passed through different stages of curriculum development." This is the order she gave: 1. The subject as a dominant center in a textbook curriculum. 2. A subject-matter curriculum, one step removed from the textbook curriculum. 3. A curriculum with different subjects integrated or correlated. 4. The "broad field" curriculum, as in the case of reading, writing, and spelling being grouped as language arts. 5. The core curriculum, with centers such as home life, conservation, or managing money, planned for all children. 6. The experience curriculum centered about the real problems and experiences of particular groups and individuals. As a convenience for reporting in this bulletin, activities and practices that visitors describe are grouped as follows: Developing Understanding and Skill in Reading Learning To Write and To Spell Using Numbers Learning How To Be Well and Safe Using Science Meaningfully Improvement of Social Understanding and Experience Within this grouping are suggested specific practices observed by the visitors. Many schools follow such practices. This report does not represent a total program followed by any school in particular. Neither does it describe all the good practices observed. An attempt has been made to include examples of the experience type of learning from all States, but not necessarily from all schools. Techniques of teaching that are determined by published courses of study, handbooks, and textbooks are not included here. In teaching fundamental skills, most schools work toward such objective norms as have been established by standard tests. Developing Understanding and Skill in Reading Most children in literate societies such as ours are so conditioned by their environment that learning to read has a prestige value to them. If they fail to read when most of their playmates read, they become emotionally disturbed, either because their parents are disturbed or because the school or home has seemed to expect them to read at a certain time. One of the more modern practices in the skills of reading and of other school subjects is to help children to learn them meaningfully when they have a use for them and are mature enough to learn them. In no school did observers have time to see a total reading program. They did see children using a great many reading skills, getting pleasure from reading, and making use of a variety of reading materials. Incidents observed follow: |