History of The University of Chicago
Laboratory Schools

Chapter Two

The New School Thrives 1896--1900

Though the school had only "about twelve pupils" when it began in January, 1896, by October thirty-two pupils were enrolled, ranging in age from six to twelve. There were two full time teachers -- one in science (nature study) and one in history and literature -- an instructor in manual training, a part-time instructor in music, and three graduate students as assistants.

Even before the end of its first year, the school had outgrown its original quarters. During Christmas vacation, 1896, it was moved to the South Park Club House on the southeast corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Rosalie Court (now Harper Avenue). Moving costs were paid by several loyal parents. New and larger quarters meant that more pupils could be admitted, and about a dozen were accepted out of the many who applied. Now more teachers were needed -- and more money for their salaries.

Money, in fact, was always a problem. Tuition fees were low; in the beginning they were set at $12 a quarter, then later gradually raised to $25 a quarter for the older children. So contributions were sought and gratefully accepted. In the early years, the aggregate amounts given ranged from $3,000 to $5,000 a year. In 1899, individual contributions varied from $10 to $2,400.

By October, 1897, the enrollment was sixty, the teachers numbered sixteen, and the space was again inadequate. Again there was a quest-for larger quarters, and a year later the school was moved to a large dwelling at 5412 Ellis Avenue. A barn, connected with the house by a covered way, was used for a gymnasium and manual training room.

From the start Mr. Dewey had hoped to include four and five-year old children in his school, but there was never quite enough money until in 1898, the Castle family of Hawaii gave $1,500 for this special purpose. Thus the kindergarten was added and the age range extended. By the autumn of 1898, there-were twenty children under six years of age among a total enrollment of ninety-five. The teaching staff had been increased to twelve full time and seven part-time teachers. The latter were University students who were given free tuition in return for their services. The school remained at 5412 Ellis Avenue until 1903, when it moved into Emmons Blaine Hall.

TEACHERS AND CURRICULUM

When Mr. Dewey reported to President Harper on the year's work for 1897--98, he gave the total expenses for the year as $12,870, of which-the major part, $9,160, went for teachers' salaries. Mr. Dewey explained that he had to- pay good salaries in order to get good teachers Many of his teachers, he added, could have commanded higher salaries elsewhere but chose to work with him because of their interest in the school.

In the beginning year of the school, Mr. Dewey planned to keep children of different ages together, the older ones helping the younger, as in a family; but this idea was soon discarded. He had also wanted each group to be taught all subjects by one teacher but soon realized that if the work was to be challenging, stimulating, and thought provoking it should be done by specialists. By 1898; the school was on a departmental basis, and there were teacher specialists in literature, history, woodworking, science, physical education, textiles, cooking, and music.

The teacher's job was to introduce the children to a problem, then help them determine what could be done to solve it. He had to anticipate some of the more puzzling difficulties that might arise, help the pupils by questions and suggestions when they reached a blank wall, supply materials which they were not able to find, and give a hand whenever a pupil's ambitious plans were frustrated by his own limitations.

Al} the groups learned history, which Mr. Dewey viewed as a way of giving children "insight into social life." What was called science was largely nature study --observation of the world about them. The subject matter in history and science was left to the teacher to choose, organize for continuity, evaluate, and keep or discard.

The activities of the school, the experimentation that went on, and the laboratory aspects of the children's learning were of great interest to supporters and critics alike. Beginning in November, 1896, and continuing through the school year to June, 1897, the university Record, a small leaflet-type newspaper issued each Friday by the University, almost always contained a report on the work of some group in the Dewey School. The reports were presented in considerable detail so that parents, other teachers, and the University faculty would know precisely what was being done. From these reports, the following activities have been selected at random:

One of the younger groups cooked cereal, cornmeal, hominy, cranberry sauce, applesauce, cranberry jelly, and stewed pears, apricots, and prunes. They weighed the sugar in ounces, measured other ingredients in cups, worked with fractions and other number facts, and learned to read the clock. Another activity, also in cooking, was a comparison of flaked, rolled, and cracked wheat with whole grain wheat to discover how much starch each contained and hence the amount of water needed and the time required for cooking.

Group III, aged six and seven, boiled sugarcane to make syrup, separated cotton lint from the cottonseed, and dyed cotton cloth.

Group IV, aged seven and a half to eight, poured melted lead pipe into sand molds to make weights for scales, estimating the amount of lead to be melted for each weight. They also constructed thermometers.

Group V, aged eight to ten, looked at raw wool through a microscope, compared wool fibers with cotton fibers, carded wool by hand, and made a set of quilting frames in manual training class.

Group VI, the nine year olds, made pewter by fusing zinc, lead, and tin, adding bismuth, copper, and antimony.

Group VII, aged ten, planted seeds and experimented with the effects of different amounts of heat and moisture on germination.

Group VIII, eleven-year-olds, worked out a machine to straighten wool fibers.

Group IX, aged twelve, constructed a trefoil geometrically for one of the younger groups who needed it to make wood dies for printing cloth.

Group X, aged thirteen, took observations of the sun's altitude and used their findings to determine the latitude of Chicago.

The pupils were not divided into grades. The work was graded for continuity, but the children were grouped "on the basis of community interests, general intellectual capacity and mental alertness, and ability to do certain kinds of work." (School and Society, page 106.) Among the younger children, there were eight to ten in a group; among the older children, twelve to fifteen. There is no statement to indicate who did the grouping, but probably it was done by the teachers, working in cloÔe cooperation. Since this was before the day of intelligence and achievement tasting, the teachers' observations must have served as criteria. There were no examinations, and no marks were given. During the month of February, 1897; a day-by-day account of the work was presented in consecutive numbers of the University Record. Group IV, on a certain day, "spent thirty minutes in shop labelling their benches and working on new drafting boards, thirty minutes in quiet reading, thirty minutes in sewing, and an hour in preparing and serving luncheon which consisted of pea soup, boiled rice, and cocoa. In the after noon, they read aloud Chapter X in Church's lliad, stopping for discussion on points of special interest." On the following Friday the same group spent thirty minutes in shop, thirty minutes modeling the mountains and river valleys of Greece, guided by a black board map, and forty-five minutes in the gymnasium. When they returned in the afternoon, they wrote about what the Greek thought of their gods, then read and discussed their papers.

WORLD LANGUAGES

World languages were introduced to the children early. The teaching of French was begun in 1897 and was correlated with other subjects. Just as the learning of English grammar was incidental to other activities, so was French grammar. Conversation was paramount. The children learned to speak in French about their cooking, sewing, weaving and shopwork. They learned French rhymes, sang French songs, dramatized French stories and folk legends, and talked with one another in French. This was a complete departure from the way languages were ordinarily taught at that time. Two years later, in 1899, German and Latin were added and were also taught by the conversational method. French and German songs and plays appear in written records of the Christmas programs presented by the children. The history and literature of France and Germany were also included in this rich, interesting language curriculum.

THE HEALTH PROGRAM

The Dewey School health program was unique for its time. Early in the school's history a medical doctor was added to the faculty quite uncommon practice. Each child was given a personal physical examination in connection with the gymnasium program, and careful observations were made of his eyes, nose, throat, ears, heart, and lungs. Any defects were reported to the parents in order that the child could have corrective attention. Good posture was stressed. Tests were made for spinal curvatures, and twice a year measurements were taken for the correct adjustment of seats and desks.

The physical education program included outdoor play and games, whenever weather permitted, as well as indoor games and exercises. Wands and dumbbells, part of the gymnasium equipment, were effectively used in rhythms and dances. Not only were there play periods in the daily program but also playtime after school. The health and physical activities program has, of course, changed over the years, but it has always been an important part of the scheme of the school.

Field trips were frequent another unusual aspect of the curriculum. During 1896-97, an hour and a half was set aside on Monday mornings for trips to the Field Columbian Museum. This building, constructed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, was located where the Museum of Science and Industry now stands and had a great variety of exhibits. The younger children had a plot of ground on the Wooded Island in Jackson Park where they often went to observe seasonal changes in nature. Older children went to the University laboratories to see such instruments as the interferometer and spectroscope. There were also longer trips -- to the quarry on Stony Island where glacial markings were observed, to the cotton mills in Aurora to see the spinning of cotton, and others to Ravinia to see the clay bluffs, to Miller Station to see the sand dunes and desert, and to Sixty-third Street and the city limits to see a typical prairie area. Some of the parents criticized the field trips as being too tiring and time consuming, but the trips remained an integral part of the school curriculum. Why learn from books what could better be learned through actual experience and observation?

VISITORS

Visitors came in numbers to see what was often called "the play school." They brought with them the concept of the accepted school of the day, described by Flora J. Cooke, principal of the Francis Parker school, in a paper read before the Parents' Association of that school on December 6, 1910:

A few years ago in a great school in New York,
I watched children take out their books, open
them, and begin to study at the count of "One,
two, three." They lifted their slates, poured on
water, erased their work, again to count; they
marched to place, stood in line, took position, read,
spelled, or repeated the multiplication table and
returned to seats. All worked as smoothly as a high
power machine and it was the proud boast of the
supervisor that she could go into any schoolroom of
a given grade at a given hour and find the children
working upon exactly the same lesson, using the
same methods. This statement is not exaggerated.

From the beginning, so many visitors came that someone had to be delegated to show them about and explain the work, and by November, 1897, Mr. Dewey regretted that there were not enough guides available. Visitors were free to go from room to room -- in fact, were invited by Mr. Dewey to make themselves at home -- and each room had extra chairs for them. In 1899, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays were visiting days, and in the next year, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were so designated. Even today the school receives some two thousand visitors a year.

A NEW NAME

In 1900, when the Dewey School was four years old, it was referred to as the University Elementary School. Some time afterward it began to be called the Laboratory School, harking back to Mr. Dewey's concept of it. Ella Flagg Young, who in 1900 was associate professor in the Department of Pedagogy and general supervisor of instruction with Mr. Dewey, has been credited with

suggesting the name.

COMMUNICATION AND INTERCOMMUNICATION

An unusual system of communication was made necessary by the experimental nature of the school. During the first years, when the teachers were attempting to find their way and were experimenting in different groups, weekly teachers' meetings were held. Here the work of the previous week was reported so that the teachers knew what was being done in all groups and with what success. They learned from one another as they exchanged views on problems, materials, and techniques. Also , teachers were given time to visit one another's groups and familiarize themselves with the over-all plan and operation of the school. Besides the informal teachers' meetings, there were formal seminar groups and pedagogical club meetings. Pupils, too, knew about the activities of groups other than their own. At weekly assemblies different groups reported on projects, on trips taken or excursion- made; they read stories they had written, gave plays they had authored, or sang songs they had composed. There were almost no long-rehearsed, formal programs. The presentations were kept free and natural, representing the children's own expressions. In addition, a School paper was printed weekly. Its production was supervised by one of the older groups, but younger group contributed reports, stories, poems, and songs. The Parents' Association was another vital means of communication. Not only did its members have Mr. Dewey's lectures to inform them, but they themselves brought up questions. The once-a-month meetings were supplemented by informal discussions, and the Dewey School was frequently the subject of spirited conversation at social events. Add to the above the reports printed in the weekly University Record, and a more effective system o[sterling] communication between parents, administrative staff, teachers, and pupils was difficult to imagine. As a result, each of them was personally concerned--and involved--with all that went on in the School.

By 1900, when the School had been in operation only four years, it was already known far and wide. The University Record reported this comment made at a meeting of the National Council of Education by Dr. A. B. Hinsdale of the University of Michigan: "More eyes are now fixed upon the University Elementary School at Chicago than upon any other elementary School in the country and probably in the world." Well known, yes, but always in need of funds and always dependent, for its very survival, on the contributions of loyal parents and friends.