Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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What this means to the teachers was set forth to me by the victims. One was teaching a class of children on a dark stone staircase. Another was teaching in a room on a level with the elevated railroad, with trains coming and going on four tracks; she would have to stand in the middle of the room and shout in order to be heard by all the pupils; and this in a new school, just built! An inspector of some sort came along and entered on his report, “room noisy”; the teacher was denied promotion, for some reason which could not be explained, and it was over a year before she could get the matter straightened out—the words “room noisy” had been taken to mean that she did not maintain discipline!

Another woman was teaching physical culture in a dark basement, with water always on the floor. She had seven classes every day, with fifty children in each class; and the gas lights were so feeble that she could not see the children she was supposed to be teaching. She said to one boy: “Stand with your feet together.” He answered: “There’s a puddle of water under me.” And when the physical culture classes got through with this hole, it became a play-ground for the other children!