ANNUAL REPORT

OF THE

Superintendent of Instruction

St. Louis, Mo., March 1, 1923.

To the Board of Education of the City of St. Louis.

Gentlemen:

I take pleasure in submitting a statement of the work of the Department of Instruction for the year 1921-22 to form part of your sixty-eighth annual report.

Respectfully,

JOHN J. MADDOX,

Superintendent of Instruction.

This page is set aside as a memorial of faithful services ended by death during the school year 1921-1922.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

Report of C. G. Rathmann, Assistant Superintendent:

VISUAL EDUCATION AND THE ST. LOUIS SCHOOL MUSEUM.

Our school rooms of today are becoming what they should be, educational workshops. Teachers and pupils are happy in their work because the activities of the school room, the life and spirit in it, are becoming such as will awaken and maintain interest and pleasure in the work.

No longer do we see the teacher sitting at the desk most of the day with the textbook before her, asking all the questions, the pupils answering as many as they can, depending mostly upon how well they have memorized the text of the book. The child has come into his own. The pupils are doing their own observing, thinking and discovering; the teacher helping, guiding and inspiring. The children are doing the work under the tactful direction of the teacher, the latter stepping more and more into the background, but never losing her hold on the work and the pupils. The presentation, discussion and drill of the work in the various subjects are supplemented by activities which awaken and cultivate initiative, self-expression and self-activity in the pupils. Projects. and problems that call for inquiries, investigations, experiments, manual expressions, reading and discussions with their valuable socializing influence constitute an important part of these activities.

As a result of these modern, rational methods of teaching and learning, the relations between teachers and pupils are becoming what they should be, those of comrades, good friends. One of these methods is Visual Education.

When Hamlet was asked by Polonius, "What do you read, my Lord?", he replied, "Words, words words". This could be said of the work in the schoolroom not very long ago when the children were passive recipients of what teachers and textbooks gave them, when they did nothing but read, and hear and when the range of their reading and hearing increased far more rapidly than that of their concrete experiences. They read and heard about the earth, about the great changes produced on its surface through the activity of nature and man, about the people, their life and work and their adjustment to their environment, but for all of this they had no interpreting ideas. They read and heard but they did not see any of the wonderful things they heard and read about, and the more they read and heard, the more anxious they became to see and to get into personal contact with the things about which teacher and textbook told them.

To make the children acquainted with the world in which they live we must bring them into personal contact with the world. "As far as possible men are to be taught to become wise not by books but by the heavens, the earth, oaks and beeches, that is, they must learn to know and examine things themselves and not the testimony and observing of others". This doctrine of Comenius, forgotten for centuries, has come to life again, and we are beginning to realize that, if we want to give the child vivid, and lasting impressions of materials and processes which he is to learn, and awaken in him the desire and the ability to do his own exploring and discovering we must take him into the world or bring the world to him.

What is Visual Education? Visual instruction is not confined to the schools. It has become the most popular and the most efficient method of disseminating information and knowledge. The graph, the diagram and the picture convey a message far more vividly and impressively than the most carefully worded statement. The newspapers, bare of all illustrations not many years ago, today supplement their statements by copious pictorial presentations thereby making the information they give more intelligible and convincing. Commercial and industrial establishments appeal to the eye of the public by means of pictorial representations tell the people what they have to offer. The colored poster is playing a prominent part in commercial advertising. The reports of all the departments of the national, state and municipal government contain a wealth of graphs and pictures which enable the public to understand the message better than would a complicated mass of statistical data.

The child understands better, learns more thoroughly and retains longer things, conditions and processes when he is brought into personal contact with them and sees them with his own eyes, than when his learning is based upon the experience of others. In order that the child may acquire knowledge and understanding of materials, processes and influences, he must have experiences with them, and these experiences will enable him to understand the experiences of others. These experiences are given him by visual methods of education.

What Must be Done to Make Visual Education Function Successfully? Three factors must be considered: 1. Careful selection of the material. 2. Proper presentation and discussion. 3. Judicious organization of pupil experiences with the purpose of development.