Perry the Community-Used 0

No. 83.
Health, Education, Recreation
THE COMMUNITY-USED
SCHOOL
BY
CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY
Department of Child Hygiene of the Russrll Sage Foundation
Reprinted from the Tenth Yearbook of the National Society
for the Study of Education Published by
The University of Chicago Press
f)
DEPARTMENT OF CHILD HYGIENE OF THE
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
1 Madison Avenue
New York City
ANNEX LIB*
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Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google
VIII. THE COMMUNITY-USED SCHOOL
CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY
Russell Sage Foundation, New York City
Public School No. 9 of Rochester, New York, besides affording the
regular elementary day instruction, is used also as an evening school
for foreigners in the winter and a vacation school in the summer. Its
yard is a public playground, not only during July and August, but after
class hours throughout the year, while in the building itself is provided a
place for the utensils and athletic paraphernalia needed in the games and
sports. The large room of the school is both an assembly hall and a
gymnasium. Here, in the margin of the day, are held public lectures,
free literary entertainments, amateur theatricals, concerts, mass meet-
ings, and moving-picture shows. When the chairs are removed it is
given over to numerous dances, basket-ball games, athletic exhibitions,
and other social doings. These occasions do not occur spasmodically
and infrequently: they come according to an annual program which is
both full and choice. They are provided by the city and enjoyed by
the public without discrimination.
The class and kindergarten rooms serve by night and Sunday after-
noons as places for reading both books and periodicals, playing quiet
games, and rehearsing orchestral and glee music. There is no fee
attached to these privileges and the people of the neighborhood make
a liberal use of them. Thriving civic clubs—four separate organiza-
tions for men, women, young women, and youths—also have quarters
in the building while free classes of both sexes rotate in the use of [the
gymnasium, which is well equipped with apparatus and shower-baths,
and manned with a staff of competent specialists. Such, briefly, are
the main features of what is probably one of the best examples of a
community-used school in this country, or indeed, in the world.
There are fortunately many other American schools which afford
these privileges in varying degrees. As in the case of this Rochester
school they supplement the regular day instruction with activities which
enrich the lives of grown-ups as well as children and thus serve more
adequately the communities in which they are located. This larger
1
3
THE TENTH YEARBOOK
use of school property not only affects the community; it develops the
school as well. First let us consider the effects upon the community.
These, for the sake of clearness, may be grouped under three heads:
public health, civic efficiency, and social solidarity.
I. PUBLIC HEALTH
Perhaps the most obvious way in which the wider use of school
property contributes to the physical well-being of the community is
found in the increased opportunities for play and enjoyable hand
occupations afforded by vacation classes and yard games and sports.
Jumping, calisthenics, basket-ball, and dancing give not only immediate
benefits but also permanent ones, since they foster athletic habits. But
for the shower-bath, first taken at the playground or in the school
gymnasium, many people would probably never acquire the custom
of daily bathing. The art of swimming which is included in many
playground and recreation-center programs is not only a valuable
physical exercise but an accomplishment of prime importance in certain
emergencies. The chinning, jumping, and running events which con-
stitute the badge tests and class athletics now carried on in many
schools give bodily strength and inculcate, at the same time, notions
of the simplicity, cheapness, and effectiveness of the elemental, really
necessary things of life. Folk-dancing, especially, represents the
maximum of benefit with the minimum of expense. Exhilarating,
sociable, imparting grace, exercising all the muscles, quickening the
important bodily functions, requiring small space per person, and
economical of teaching material—its introduction has changed the aspect
of life for thousands of city girls and it may be preparing heritages of
rhythm and color for unborn generations.
The medical inspections given children at the playgrounds and the
physical examinations held in the social-center gymnasiums affect
beneficially not only the subjects themselves but indirectly their rela-
tions and friends, by setting higher standards of physical efficiency and
by suggesting ways of discovering latent weaknesses. Of a similar
value are the playground exercises specially prescribed for children
with wry-neck, spinal curvature, and other deformities; the pure milk
distributed and the day-nursery care afforded now in city-school yards
during the hot months. A beginning which may have even more far-
reaching effects upon the health of American school children is to be

seen in the warm, nourishing lunches now furnished in some of the

THE COMMUNITY-USED SCHOOL
schools of Houston, Texas, by the Mothers' Clubs of that city. Con-
siderable loss of life is undoubtedly prevented through the mere with-
drawal from the crowded city streets of large numbers of children through
the attractions of the playground and vacation school. It is to be hoped
also that drawing them out of the homes and leaving the housewives
greater freedom for household duties results in cleaner rooms and more
appetizing meals for the whole family. There can be no doubt, however,
that both the training rules which surround participation in out- and
indoor sports, and the custom of spending leisure time in social and
evening recreation centers promote temperance in the use of stimulants
on the part of young men. So much for the physical effects of the
practices in community-used schools.
Concerning the health-giving instruction imparted in these centers
an example is found in the results of an evening illustrated talk given in
one of the Cleveland schools. It was entitled "How We May Aid the
Fight Against Tuberculosis," and afterward the committee in charge
received over forty letters from pupils telling of sanitary changes
which had taken place in their homes. In Chicago the Visiting Nurses'
Association carried on one summer a campaign of education through the
vacation schools for the purpose of ameliorating the diarrheal diseases
in young children. These schools also send out through the children a
constant stream of information upon the best ways of cooking, preserving
food, securing pure milk, and keeping the home clean. In many play-
grounds babies are bathed by trained nurses in the presence of the
mothers who are also given other instruction about the care of their
infants.
Over one hundred of the lectures given annually by the Board of
Education in New York come under the head of physiology and hygiene,
while in the social centers and home and school meetings throughout
the country a large part of the talks given are devoted to such topics
as "The Care of Infants," "Pure Milk," "The Prevention of Con-
tagious Diseases," "First-Aid Methods," and the advocacy of a blood-
less Fourth of July. In the club meetings the mothers and wives not
only discuss similar subjects but exchange recipes, learn how to clothe
their girls properly and how to stop cigarette-smoking among their boys.
Thus through thousands of channels opened by the wider use of school

property is the wisdom of the physician and the scientist being conveyed
into the homes of the inexpert and the susceptible.

4
THE TENTH YEARBOOK
H. CIVIC EFFICIENCY
In the work of rendering more effective and less wasteful those
services for the whole community which it delegates to representatives,
school extension can render valuable assistance. Citizens must be
adequately informed before they can exercise "efficient citizenship."
How organizations meeting in schoolrooms help civic progress is
illustrated in Rochester where, at the second meeting of the pioneer
Men's Civic Club, "The Duties of an Alderman" were discussed by a
member of that body. In responding to a vote of thanks he said: "You
have given me a vote of thanks. I feel that I want to give you a vote
of thanks for the privilege of speaking to you and hearing your frank
discussion of my words. If you have been benefited by my coming here,
I have been benefited more. If every member of the Common Council
and every other public servant had, frequently, such opportunities as this
to discuss public matters with those to whom he owes his appointment
it would mean that we would have much better, more intelligent repre-
sentation of the people's interests and a cleaner government."1
Some of the other topics discussed by the civic clubs in this city are:
"The Duty of a Citizen to the City," "Idealism in Municipal Politics,"
"Why Vote for Taft?" "Democratic Policies," "Socialist Policies,"
and "Prohibition Policies." The reason for the success of these meet-
ings given by a prominent schoolman who was visiting Rochester is as
follows:
Yes, I see it. The foundation of this development in Rochester is the
right of free discussion and democratic control. I have wondered why, in
our city, although we have spent as much money and effort in having the
schools used as Social Centers as you have, yet we haven't developed the same
spirit. The reason is that the men haven't made use of the schools, and the
men haven't made use of the schools because we have superimposed restric-
tions upon their discussion. It is strange to think that, in America, in the
most essentially American of our institutions we have denied this right. Un-
questionably the secret of the success of the Rochester movement is in the fact
that it has not been un-American.3
And the men in these clubs do not limit themselves to mere talk.
They have formed a league which works "for the city as a whole."
1 Ward, Rochester Social Centers and Civic Clubs, pp. 29-30.

■ Fifty-fifth Report of Board of Education (Rochester, N.Y.), p. 138.

As the Author receives no royalties and the Department of
Child Hygiene makes no profit on the sale of this book we
do not hesitate to use this method to help put copies into
the hands of persons who we think ought to read it.
Order Form
19
Charities Publication Committee
105 East 22nd Street
New York City, N.Y.
Gentlemen.-
Enclosed with this find $ for which please
send me _copies of The Wider Use of the School
Plant, by Clarence Arthur Perry, at $1.25 each, postpaid.
Name
Street, Number
City, State
Send Check, Money Order, or 2-cent Stamps.
With a year's subscription to The Survey, $2.75
(Regular price for the two, $3.25} (over)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Wider Use
Evening Schools
Evening Schools Abroad
Promotion of Attendance at Evening Schools
Vacation Schools
School Playgrounds
Public Lectures and Entertainments
Evening Recreation Centers
Social Centers
Organized Athletics, Games and Folk Dancing
Meetings in School Houses
Social Betterment through Wider Use

They have been instrumental in securing playgrounds. Their agita-
tion has brought about improvements in the streets and street-car service
and the establishment of public comfort stations; and they have set the
example of systematic action in opposition to unsatisfactory divisions
of land by real-estate companies.
The civic effect of public lectures having such topics as these, selected
from many on the New York Board of Education's program, is obvious:
"Municipal Cleaning and Its Relation to Public Health," "Housing
in Europe," "Factories, Tenements and the Sweating System," "Our
New Water Supply," and "City Planning."
By way of preparing young people for community life the vacation
schools render valuable service in teaching property rights to street
gangs, curing juvenile delinquency, and affording backward pupils larger
opportunities to secure promotion, privileges which may determine that
they are to remain in school long enough to secure the civic education
afforded in the last two years of the elementary course. The evening
recreation centers yield not only the same sort of help to retarded pupils
but through their clubs and debating societies the youths receive excel-
lent parliamentary training and imbibe many facts about municipal
affairs. Even the sports contribute to this end when they demonstrate
in the conduct of some reclaimed tough that, as Miss Evangeline Whitney
phrased it,"the athlete's code of honor is a triumph over lawlessness, the
beginning of a citizen's conception of duty."
The kind of civic work done by the organizations which hold their
meetings in schoolhouses is well illustrated by the activity of the Parent-
Teachers Clubs of Auburn, New York, which, through a skilful agita-
tion, secured a probation officer for the city, and also by that of the
Parents' League, which offered prizes and held a neighborhood improve-
ment contest in a suburb of Boston.
ni. SOCIAL SOLIDARITY
Among the forces tending to fill in the fissures in our social life which
have resulted from the prevailing industrial system and the immigra-
tion of uncongenial aliens may be mentioned the supervised play-
ground, the evening recreation and social centers, and the basement or
hall where folk-dancing is held. Playground workers frequently tell of
race feuds which have either entirely disappeared or been converted

into enthusiastic competitions through the effects of organized games

6
THE TENTH YEARBOOK
and sports. The peasant father acquires a different feeling toward
Americans when his daughter dances his national dance before him and
tells of the good times she has after school. The natives also feel a new
respect for the poor foreigner when at some school festival they see him
participating gracefully and joyously in an exhibition of the merry-
making which had lightened the labors of his people for generations past.
The domestic-science training of summer schools and playgrounds
imparts to thousands of immigrant homes a knowledge of American
customs which subtly undermines that greatest barrier to racial inter-
mingling—differences in manner of living. The club-life of the evening
recreation centers works toward the same end in a different way. How
effectively, no one has more adequately expressed than Mrs. Humphrey
Ward who, after a visit to several New York centers, reported as follows:
In another we found a thousand girls, divided in the same way between
active physical exercise and club meetings (by the way, while one of the boys'
clubs was debating Mr. Bryce's American Commonwealth, the girls were dis-
cussing Silas Marner); and, in the third, perhaps most remarkable of all, five
hundred girls were gathered debating whether you should retain the Philippine
Islands, with a vigor, a fluency, a command of patriotic language and feeling
which struck me with amazement. Here were girls, some of whom could only
have arrived in your country a year or two ago, and all of them the children
of aliens, appealing to your Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and talking of your
Revolutionary War and the Monroe Doctrine, of liberty and self-government,
with an intensity of personal appropriation such as no mere school teaching
could have produced.1
Adult foreigners are affected in similar ways by the privileges of
school social centers.
When you meet the Italian half way [said a prominent naturalized citizen
of Rochester] as you do in the Social Center, recognizing that he, as an Italian,
has something to bring, something to contribute to the common store, then you
teach him to love and honor the American Flag and all that it stands for to
you, by showing some respect for his flag, and all that that stands for to him,
then you make him feel friendly, you make him feel that he is a man, you make
him feel that he must be worthy of his larger citizenship.2
In a different way, by the fusing effect of experiencing a common
emotion, the social center exerts an amalgamative influence upon the

1 Tenth Annual Report of the City Superintendent of Schools (New York City), p.
52.3-
'Ward, Rochester Social Centers and Civic Clubs, p. 90.

community which is needed by natives quite as much as by immigrants.
Rev. Samuel McChord Crothers gave an instance of it when he said:
Not since Civil War days have I heard people sing with such spirit. The
one justification of war is that it makes people realize that they have a common
bond, a common interest—and they express that feeling in songs. You people
of Rochester, in the Social Centers, have made the same discovery of a common
bond. You prove it by the spirit of your singing. You have done a great
thing. You have found a substitute for the only good thing about war, so that
war is no longer necessary.1
How the school lectures aid in the assimilation of the alien is well
illustrated in New York where provision is made for several of the races
which are here in large numbers. The Italians hear in their own tongue
a discourse upon the "Rights and Duties of an American Citizen." A
Hebrew tells his neighbors about "Great American Literary Men,"
while the Germans listen to their compatriots expatiate upon musical
celebrities. For the more recent immigrants there are lectures which
are so fully illustrated with pictures and demonstrations that they are
to a large degree understandable without much knowledge of English.
Again the public lecture exerts a needed cohesive force upon all who
come within its range. The reason is well stated by Superintendent
A. B. Poland of Newark:
The school building is the common forum where men and women of all social
and intellectual grades meet on a level, as nowhere else—certainly not in houses
of worship, since there they are necessarily divided into separate and distinct
communions. Scarcely another pjace, except it be the polling place, can men of
all classes meet on a common basis of citizenship; and even at the polls men are
usually divided into hostile camps. Anything that draws men together on a
common footing of rights, powers, duties, and enjoyments is a great social and
moral power for good citizenship. Next to the public school, which tends to
obliterate hereditary and acquired social and class distinctions, the public
lecture held in the public schoolhouse and paid for out of the public purse is
the most thoroughly democratic of our public institutions.3
IV. REACTION OF COMMUNITY-USE UPON THE SCHOOL SYSTEM
The president of the Pittsburgh Playground Association reports
that as a result of its vacation-school work, industrial and domestic-
science departments have been placed in a number of the day schools.

1 Fifty-fifth Report of Board of Education (Rochester, N.Y.), p. 145.

'Fifty-first Annual Report of Board of Education (Newark, N.J.), p. 177.

8
THE TENTH YEARBOOK
In others play has been given a place on the regular daily program and
many teachers have learned how to play with their children. Teachers
commonly state that the pupils who have enjoyed summer-school and
playground privileges return to their classes in the fall in a less demor-
alized condition and settle down to work with less friction and trouble.
The success of the summer-school activities is undoubtedly respon-
sible for the tendency now noticeable in many places to extend the period
of the regular day instruction. Cleveland has been so successful in
running the new Technical High School twelve months in the year that
plans are now being made to place the elementary instruction on that
basis, and the idea has attracted attention in other cities. In Oakland,
California, some of the schools have been opened Saturday mornings to
allow instruction in domestic science and manual training. In New
York, Newark, and several other cities the children are allowed to hold
games and folk-dances after hours in classrooms and basements.
Concerning the effects of systematic athletics and play upon school
work Mr. Lee F. Hanmer has written as follows: "In cities where this
work has been organized and given a fair test school authorities are
practically unanimous that (i) class work is better; (2) the health of the
school children is improved; (3) a wholesome school spirit is developed;
(4) there is less trouble about discipline owing to the closer relation and
better understanding between the pupils and teachers."1
The organization of home and school associations in connection
with the larger schools created a demand for a meeting-place in the
building more suitable than the ordinary classroom. The principals
also wished a place where the whole school could assemble and the con-
sequence has been that in many cities all plans for new elementary
schools now provide for a spacious auditorium. Thus the building
becomes better adapted not only for community-use but also for
developing a healthy school spirit. Without a common meeting place
the only other agency for creating this feeling is to be found in
athletics, a very effective one, to be sure, but one that does not develop
exactly the same kind of spirit that springs from a debate, an inspiring
lecture, or a public exhibition of scholastic ability.
One of the arguments used in a recent successful campaign waged
by the Civic League of Lexington, Kentucky, for the purpose of raising

'Hanmer, Athletics in Ike Public Schools (p. 11), Russell Sage Foundation
Pamphlet.
funds with which to build a new model schoolhouse was the accommoda-
tion which would be made "for various social uses." Their appeal,
speaking of the large room which could be used as kindergarten, gym-
nasium, or auditorium, said:
With the stage at the end and folding chairs it may be converted into an
auditorium for stereopticon lectures, musical entertainments, and plays. When
the school buildings belonging to the people are used by the people as their
clubhouses, where recreation, physical activity, and educative amusement
may be had by the young in proper environment the saloon evil and other
social evils will not cut so large a figure in our civilization.
But besides this direct way in which community-use is securing
better school faculties for the children there is a constant improvement
in educational methods through the better understanding of the teacher's
aims and problems which the parent has gained by being brought into
the school building. The citizen, thus enlightened, in his capacity of
taxpayer strengthens the schoolman's work with appropriations, and as
parent gives him more effective co-operation in the home.
Finally, the forces which are rapidly transforming public schools
into focuses of community life are genuine human needs, some elemental,
others created by an unprecedented gregariousness, but all compelling
satisfaction if the advance of the race toward its destiny is to be unim-
peded. The matter has been well stated by Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick
in these words:
Only upon the basis of personal understanding and mutual confidence is
efficient and coherent social action possible. This is the foundation of democ-
racy. Communities must have, therefore, material and social machinery by
which various classes shall come to know each other; some instrument that shall
cross-section racial, financial and social strata; something that shall go beneath
these and touch fundamental human interests. Of these the central one is the
love of children, and the machinery most natural, as well as most available, is
the public-school system.1
1 Introduction to Perry, Wider Use of the School Plant, p. vii.

RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION PUBLICATION
Wider Use of the School
a Plant m =
Illustrated Price Postpaid $1.25
Public Money Pays for our costly, handsome,
well equipped school buildings. To get the belt
results from this investment they must be kept
open longer than seven hours a day. In many
cities the day instruction is now supplemented by
other activities which yield large dividends in social
and civic service.
The Community Owns the Schoolhouse. It
is the natural neighborhood center, day and evening,
the year round. It can be used effectively for a
surprising number and variety of gatherings. It
can serve the whole neighborhood and bring back
to the tax-payers who paid for it a rich return in
recreation, education and good citizenship.
The Department or Child Hygiene of the
Russell Sage Foundation commissioned Mr. Perry
to do this work. He has brought together the
hard-won experience of many cities which have
opened their schools to the people. He gives a
practical outline of organization, cost and adminis-
tration of "wider use." The introduction is by
Dr. Luther H. Gulick.
School Extension of this Sokt was given a special session at the last meeting of
the National Municipal League and has been widely discussed by Public Education Associations,
Parent and Teacher Associations, Settlements and other organizations. Mr. Perry's book
furnishes just the information needed to give the movement impetus. The chapter
titles tell the story:
The WiderlUie Public Lectures and Entertainments
Evening Schools Evening Recreation Centers
Evening Schools Abroad Social Centers
Promotion of Attendance at Evening Schools Organized Athletics, Games and Folk Dancing
Vacation Schools Meetings in School Houses
School Playgrounds Social Betterment through Wider Use
i2mo 423 Pages 51 Illustrations Price Postpaid, $125

Send Check, Money Order or two-cent Stamps to

CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE
Publishers for the Russell Sage Foundation
105 East 22d Street New York

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No. 83.

Health, Education, Recreation

CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY

Department of Child Hygiene of the Russrll Sage Foundation

Reprinted from the Tenth Yearbook of the National Society

for the Study of Education Published by

The University of Chicago Press

DEPARTMENT OF CHILD HYGIENE OF THE

RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION

New York City

CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY

Russell Sage Foundation, New York City

Public School No. 9 of Rochester, New York, besides affording the

regular elementary day instruction, is used also as an evening school

free literary entertainments, amateur theatricals, concerts, mass meet-

ings, and moving-picture shows. When the chairs are removed it is

given over to numerous dances, basket-ball games, athletic exhibitions,

and other social doings. These occasions do not occur spasmodically

and infrequently: they come according to an annual program which is

the public without discrimination.

games, and rehearsing orchestral and glee music. There is no fee

attached to these privileges and the people of the neighborhood make

a liberal use of them. Thriving civic clubs—four separate organiza-

gymnasium, which is well equipped with apparatus and shower-baths,

and manned with a staff of competent specialists. Such, briefly, are

the main features of what is probably one of the best examples of a

community-used school in this country, or indeed, in the world.

There are fortunately many other American schools which afford

these privileges in varying degrees. As in the case of this Rochester

adequately the communities in which they are located. This larger

THE TENTH YEARBOOK

public health, civic efficiency, and social solidarity.

property contributes to the physical well-being of the community is

found in the increased opportunities for play and enjoyable hand

occupations afforded by vacation classes and yard games and sports.

Jumping, calisthenics, basket-ball, and dancing give not only immediate

for the shower-bath, first taken at the playground or in the school

gymnasium, many people would probably never acquire the custom

of daily bathing. The art of swimming which is included in many

playground and recreation-center programs is not only a valuable

physical exercise but an accomplishment of prime importance in certain

emergencies. The chinning, jumping, and running events which con-

of the simplicity, cheapness, and effectiveness of the elemental, really

necessary things of life. Folk-dancing, especially, represents the

maximum of benefit with the minimum of expense. Exhilarating,

sociable, imparting grace, exercising all the muscles, quickening the

important bodily functions, requiring small space per person, and

economical of teaching material—its introduction has changed the aspect

of life for thousands of city girls and it may be preparing heritages of

rhythm and color for unborn generations.

The medical inspections given children at the playgrounds and the

physical examinations held in the social-center gymnasiums affect

tions and friends, by setting higher standards of physical efficiency and

by suggesting ways of discovering latent weaknesses. Of a similar

value are the playground exercises specially prescribed for children

distributed and the day-nursery care afforded now in city-school yards

reaching effects upon the health of American school children is to be

seen in the warm, nourishing lunches now furnished in some of the

schools of Houston, Texas, by the Mothers' Clubs of that city. Con-

siderable loss of life is undoubtedly prevented through the mere with-