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212 The American School
102. Horace Mann Bond, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), p. 153.
103. Anderson, Education of Blacks, pp. 22-23. 104. Ibid., p. 23. 105. Ibid., p. 149. 106. Aida Negron De Montilla, Americanization in Puerto Rico and the Public-School
System, 1900-1930 (Rio Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1971), pp. 6-79. 107. Ibid., p. 163. 108. Ivan Musicant, The Banana Wars: A History of the United States Military Intervention
in Latin America from the Spanish-American War to the Invasion of Panama (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 2.
109. De Montilla, Americanization in Puerto Rico, p. 62. 110. Ibid., pp. xi-xii. 111. Ibid., p. 37. 112. Ibid., pp. 35-36. 113. Ibid., p. 36. 114. Ibid., p. 51. 115. Ibid., pp. 47-48. 116. Ibid., p. 49. 1 17. Ibid., p. 48. 118. Ibid., p. 58. 119. Ibid., pp. 63-64. 120. Ibid., p. 71. 121. Ibid., pp. 105-106. 122. Ibid., pp. 121-123.
Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools: School Showers, Kindergarten, Playgrounds, Home Economics, Social Centers, and Cultural Conflict
In the late nineteenth century, immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, together with industrialization, and expanded urban areas created a host of social problems, especially in cities. Crowded ghettos, inadequate urban services, and a population primarily use to rural living contributed to unsanitary living conditions and the spread of disease. Added to these conditions was a belief held by many Americans that a sense of community was being lost with the growth of urban America and that this loss would cause the urban population to suffer alienation, a breakdown in traditional forms of social control, and, as a consequence, increased crime and poverty. Fear also arose that the new immigrants would destroy tradi- tional American values and create a strong following for radical economic and political ideas. As the social functions of education increased, there was greater resistance to racial segregation.
The school was considered a logical institution to prevent these problems by providing social services, teaching new behaviors, and creating a community cen- ter. Nurses, health facilities, and showers were added to schools in order to con- trol the spread of disease, and special instructional programs were introduced to educate children about sanitary conditions. Americanization programs were offered as a means of assimilating children of immigrants into American life and prevent- ing the spread of radical ideologies. School cafeterias were opened to provide children with healthy food and to Americanize the diets of immigrants. Home economics blossomed as a field of studies in order to free women from the drudg- ery of household tasks, Americanize immigrant households, and apply scientific methods to household management. Playgrounds were attached to schools to pro- vide after-school activities for children—activities that, it was hoped, would reduce juvenile delinquency. To curb the sense of alienation caused by urban
213
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living, auditoriums and special facilities for adults were provided by schools to serve as centers for community activities.
All these educational changes expanded the social functions of the school. Of course, ending poverty and crime had been a traditional goal of the school since the early nineteenth century, but common school reformers at that time had seen those goals being achieved through instruction in the classroom. The changes in the late nineteenth century made the school more than a center of instruction by turning it into a major social agency.
John Dewey, the great educational philosopher of the period, explained the new social functions of the school to educators who gathered in 1902 for the annual convention of the National Education Association. He told school people from around the country that education must provide a “means for bringing peo- ple and their ideas and beliefs together, in such ways as will lessen friction and instability, and introduce deeper sympathy and wider understanding.” Using the schools as social centers, he argued, would morally uplift the quality of urban living by replacing brothels, saloons, and dance halls as centers of recreation. More important, he considered the school to be a potential clearinghouse of ideas that would interpret to the new urban industrial worker the meaning of his or her place in the modern world. Through an exchange of ideas and the establishment of relationships with a variety of people, an understanding of others and the bonds of an interdependent society would develop. The school as social center, Dewey told his audience, “must interpret to [the worker] the intellectual and social mean- ing of the work in which he is engaged: that is, must reveal its relations to the life and work of the world.” For Dewey, therefore, the new role of the school was to serve as an agency providing social services and a community center that would solve the problem of alienation in an urban industrial society.
IMMIGRATION FROM SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE
Until the late 1880s, immigration from Europe was primarily from England, Ireland, and Germany. The Irish and German immigration brought with it more Catholics who sometimes were in conflict with the Protestant majority. Between the late 1880s and 1930s immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe increased the Catholic population and brought with it larger numbers of Greek and Russian Orthodox, and Jews. In addition, the number of spoken languages increased. By 1930 laws restricted the flow of immigrants. The slowdown in immigration continued until the 1960s when new laws ushered in the most recent period of large-scale immigration.
As indicated in Table 8.1, immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe steadily increased from the 1890s to 1930. The statistics for 1910 give some indica- tion of which countries contributed the largest number of immigrants. In 1910, according to Table 8.1, the Austro-Hungarian empire (after 1920 it was divided into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Yugoslavia) provided the largest number of immigrants (258,737), with Italy being second (215,537) and Russia third (186,792). The numbers for 1930 dramatically show the effect of immigration laws with the
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 215
TABLE 8.1. Number of Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe by Country and Selected Dates:1880 to 1930
1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930
Italy
Spain, Portugal, and Greece
Poland
Russia/ USSR
Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey in Europe
Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia (since 1920), Yugoslavia (since 1920)
12,354 52,003 100,135
1,631 3,960 8,360
2,177 11,073 Between 1899 and 1919 included with Austria/ Hungary
5,014 35,598 90,787
35 723 6,852
17,267 56,199 114,847
215,537
37,740
Between 1899 and 1919 included with Austria/ Hungary
186,792
25,287
258,737
95,145 6,203
48,009 4,647
95,089 in 9,231 1921
1,751 2,772
3,913 2,159
5,666 9,184
Source: Compiled from statistics provided in Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part I (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 105-106.
numbers for Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Yugoslavia declining to 9,184, Italian immigration declining to 6,203, and Russian immigration to 2,772.
While there was a small number of immigrants from Asia between the 1880s and 1930s, as indicated in Table 8.2, the numbers from this area did not signifi- cantly increase until after the 1960s. Also, the number of immigrants, as indicated in Table 8.3, from the Caribbean and Central and South America remained low between the 1880s and 1930s but increased after the 1960s. The majority of immigrants from other parts of the Americas were from Canada and Mexico. As indicated in Table 8.3, there were few immigrants during this time period from Central and South America; for instance, only 3,044 in 1910. There was a steady stream of immigrants from the Caribbean islands with, as indicated in Table 8.3, 11,240 in 1910 and 13,800 in 1920.
Therefore, public school Americanization programs between the 1880s and 1930s primarily focused on Southern and Eastern European immigrants. After the upsurge of immigrants resulting from changes in immigration laws in the 1960s, public school programs related to immigration and language began to focus on immigrants from Asia and Central and South America.
216 The American School
TABLE 8.2. Number of Immigrants from Asia by Country and Selected Dates: 1880 to 1930
China
India
Japan
Korea
Turkey in Asia
1880
5,802
21
4
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
4
1890
1,716
43
691
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
1,126
1900
1,240
9
12,635
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
3,962
1910
1,960
1,696
2,720
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
15,212
1920
2,330
300
9,432
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
5,033
1930
1,589
110
831
No record of immigra- tion until 1948
118
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 217
Source: Compiled from statistics provided in Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 107-108.
TABLE 8.3. Number of Immigrants from Americas by Country, Region, and Selected Dates: 1880 to 1930
Mexico
Caribbean Islands
Canada
Other America
1880
492
1,851
99,174
105
1890
No records
3,070
183
580
1900
23
4,650
396
166
1910
2,680
11,240
56,555
3,044
1920
52,360
13,800
90,025
6,472
1930
12,703
5,225
65,254
4,922
Source: Compiled from statistics provided in Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part I (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 108-109.
DEVELOPING WELFARE FUNCTIONS OF SCHOOLING AND DISCRIMINATION TIME LINE
INTEGRATED TIME LINE
The expansion of school welfare activities took place against a background of immi- gration, segregation, and continuing debates about who should have U.S. citizenship. The anti-immigrant attitudes of some Anglo-Americans extended to the new wave of arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe. Some Anglo-Americans believed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were less intelligent than Anglo-Americans and that they were not prepared to participate in a republican society. These attitudes and events were similar to the discrimination faced by Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and African Americans.
The time line that follows is intended to integrate important events affecting dominant groups with the expansion of school social services. For instance, six to seven years after the opening of the first reported summer school (1872) and kin- dergarten (1873), the Carlisle Boarding School (1879) opened to deculturalize Native Americans. The playground and play movement and lesson plans were being introduced during the same years that the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) excluded Chinese immigrants and the Tape decision (1885) required California to provide schools for Chinese, which the state did in the form of segregated schools. John Dewey opened his laboratory school (1896) one year after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson (1895).
The expanded social function of schooling occurred at a time when racist laws and court rulings were supporting segregation and cultural genocide. Racism in education and school changes occurred simultaneously. For instance, I cannot find any comments by John Dewey about the increasing racist policies in education as he was organizing the Laboratory School. One might say that he didn’t care about the issue and therefore the issue was not raised. However, these were major edu- cational events at the time. One could argue that John Dewey, like some other European Americans, accepted these racial events as part of the ideology underpin- ning the American republic. While he didn’t work for the creation of segregated education, his lack of participation in fighting educational deculturalization and
Hist reported summer school
1872
Carlisle Boarding School tot decultsralizatioa of NativeAmericans
Beginning of play and playground movement
1873 1879 1880s 1880 1882
Plessy v. Ferguson Tape decision decision allowing for Model school allowing racially segregated cafeteria School social
1885
Texas courts declare Mexican Americans not
1889 1895 1896 1897 1899 1909
B«tU.S,j»iWic Lesson plans begin as part Chinese Exclusion Act school kindergarten of Heibartian Movement
First reported school shower
218 The American School
segregation is a form of racism. In other words, he appears to have accepted the racial attitudes held by other European Americans.
Even the introduction of the school shower (1889) was based on the prejudice of Anglo-Americans toward Southern and Eastern European immigrants. The stereo- type in the minds of Anglo-Americans was that the new immigrants were dirty and lacked a tradition of cleanliness. In a broader context, the expanding welfare function of the school and the Americanization programs were part of the continuing cultural struggles faced by U.S. schools.
THE KINDERGARTEN MOVEMENT
A major educational movement that combined the expansion of the social role of the school with an emphasis on improving urban living was the movement to establish public kindergartens. Kindergartens had originally served upper-class families, but by the 1880s and 1890s they were considered a primary educational method of dealing with the problems of urban poverty. In a broader context, one could argue that early childhood education, as represented by the kindergarten movement, originated in concerns with urban problems.
The concept of kindergarten as introduced in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s by Carl Schurz and Elizabeth Peabody was almost mystical in nature. The original kindergarten was opened in Germany in 1840 by Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) as a method of early childhood education that was to lead the child from a world concentrated on self to a society of children. As the name implies, the kindergarten was conceived as a garden of children to be cultivated in the same manner as plants. Like Johann Pestalozzi, Froebel advocated a model mater- nal teacher whose method “should be passive and protective, not directive and interfering.” Froebel believed that the divine spirit existed in all humans and that it was the key to social harmony. By cultivating the garden of children, the kin- dergarten teacher was to bring forth their divine spirits and create a sense of unity among all humans.
The first public school kindergarten in the United States was opened in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1873, for the specific purpose of dealing with urban poverty. In his excellent history of the St. Louis school system, The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis System, 1838-1920, Selwyn Troen describes how that sys- tem’s famous superintendent, William Torrey Harris, analyzed the distribution of children in the city according to the locality of “haunts of vice and iniquity” and decided that the only way of saving slum children from corruption was to get them into school at an early age. Harris first requested that the school board lower the minimum age of school attendance. After being refused by the school board, he recommended the establishment of kindergartens as a permanent part of the school system. Harris claimed that kindergartens were necessary because traditional socializing agencies such as the family, church, and community had collapsed:
Living in narrow, filthy alleys, poorly clad and without habits of cleanliness, “the divine sense of shame,” which Plato makes to be the foundation of civilization, is very
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 219
little developed. Self respect is the basis of character and virtue; cleanliness of person and clothing is a sine qua non for its growth in the child. The child who passes his years in the misery of the crowded tenement house or alley, becomes early familiar with all manner of corruption and immorality.
Within this context, the kindergarten was to be a substitute for the habits of living and moral training formerly taught by the family organization that supposedly had been lost in the slums of the new urban areas.
The curriculum established for the kindergarten in the St. Louis school system was intended to redeem the slum child by, in Troen’s words, bridging “the ‘nur- ture’ of the family with the established program of the district school.” A major effort of the kindergarten program was to teach virtues and manners considered necessary for community living. Emphasis was placed on teaching moral habits, cleanliness, politeness, obedience, promptness, and self-control. Thus, the kinder- garten was to be not only a substitute for the socialization that supposedly was no longer offered by the family, but also a preparation for the habits required by the school.4
This same relationship between urban reform and the kindergarten is found by Marvin Lazerson in his brilliant history of the Boston school system, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870-1915. According to Lazerson, the first director of Boston’s kindergartens, Laura Fisher, saw them as being directly concerned with elevating the home life of the urban poor. In an article published in 1904, she states, “The mere fact that the children of the slums were kept off the streets, and that they were made clean and happy by kind and motherly young women; that the child thus being cared for enabled the mother to go about her work in or outside the home—all this appealed to the heart of America, and America gave freely to make these kindergartens possible.”5
A major goal of the early kindergarten movement was to teach children hab- its that would reform the home. In other words, the early kindergarten was viewed as a means of educating the parents, particularly the mother. An early example of this thinking can be seen in Lucy Wheelock’s tale “A Lily’s Mission,” in which two slum children bring a flower home to their dingy apartment. The mother has failed to keep the house clean; the father is out drinking. Overjoyed at seeing the flower, the mother places it on a windowsill, only to discover that dirt prevents any sunlight from shining through the window to the flower. With the window clean, the sunlight reveals the filth of the apartment, which is then quickly cleaned. The mother washes and dresses, and the father, overcome by his new environment upon his return home, vows to give up the bottle.6
The concept of parental education introduced by the kindergarten movement extended the role of the school in a new direction that gave the kindergarten a social role far beyond anything originally intended by Froebel. As a new educational institution, the kindergarten was to compensate for the supposed loss of socializa- tion within the slum family, to protect the young child from the influences of the street, to provide preparation for entrance into regular elementary school classes, and to educate the parents. These extended social goals resulted in the kindergarten losing its original emphasis on creative play and self-expression. In place of these activities, the kindergarten stressed creating order and discipline in the child’s life
220 The American School
as compensation for family life and as preparation for school. Lazerson found that as the kindergarten evolved in Massachusetts in the twentieth century, it became less involved in parental education and that, in the end, discipline, order, and protection from the urban environment became its primary objectives.
HOME ECONOMICS: EDUCATION OF THE NEW CONSUMER WOMAN
Another extension of the school into the household was introduction of courses in home economics in public schools. Home economists hoped to educate “the new woman,” who through the application of domestic sciences would be freed from household drudgery to pursue further education and participate in urban reform projects. The new woman was to be primarily a consumer rather than a producer of household products. Wishing to professionalize the role of the house- wife, home economist experts characterized the new woman as a household man- ager who was mainly responsible for maintaining household budgets and buying goods for the home. After receiving home economics education in public schools, experts believed, future housewives would have increased time available to pursue an education and engage in social reform movements. Also, home economists hoped that domestic science would protect the family unit against the worst aspects of urbanization and industrialization. The 1909 announcement of the founding of the American Home Economics Association gave as its goal “the improvement of living conditions in the home, the institutional household, and the community.”7
As a profession, home economics evolved from an annual series of confer- ences held at Lake Placid, New York, beginning in 1899 under the leadership of Ellen Richards. Richards, the founder of the American Home Economics Asso- ciation and the first woman to receive a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), brought together a faith in the ability of science to improve human existence, a desire to improve women’s education, and a belief that the home was the central institution for reforming society. Reflecting these concerns, Richards, after graduating from MIT in 1873, convinced the institution to establish a Woman’s Laboratory in 1876. In 1883, Ellen Richards became the first female instructor at MIT as the separate women’s laboratory was torn down and women joined men as students at the institution. Richards taught courses on sanitary and household chemistry that focused on cooking and cleaning. In 1887, Richards conducted a study of municipal sewage treatment systems and developed the first water purity standards.9
Placing the society’s ills at the doorstep of the home, domestic scientists saw a cure through nutritional food, sanitary cooking, budgeting, and household clean- liness. Nutritionally balanced food, it was believed, would provide the energy for hard work and resistance to the temptations of the tavern. Wholesome food served in the home and school cafeteria would stimulate students to study and protect them from illness. Hospital patients would recover more quickly as a result of scientifically planned menus and food. Sanitary cooking and household cleanliness
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 221
would protect everyone from sickness. Protected from illness and energized by nutritional foods, it was believed, workers would be less likely to miss work and more likely to retain their jobs. According to the calculations of home economists, these circumstances would reduce unemployment, crime, and alcoholism. For the same reasons, students would complete their studies and find good jobs. Also, proper management of the household budget would keep families from falling into poverty. Workers would be less likely to strike if their wives could make existing wages satisfactory through proper budgeting. This belief in the ability of home economics to reform society was summed up in 1902 by Marion Talbot at the fourth annual meeting of the Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics. These conferences foreshadowed the establishment of the American Home Economics Association. Talbot stated, “the obligations of home life are not by any means limited to its own four walls, that home economics must always be regarded in light of its relation to the general social system, that men and women are alike concerned in understanding the processes, activities, obligations and opportunities which make the home and family effective parts of the social fabric.”10
Along with saving society, home economics was to liberate women from house- hold drudgery and make them active participants in shaping society. Ellen Richards worried that “the industrial world is ruled by science and that all the things with which we surround ourselves are now manufactured upon scientific principles, and, alas! women are ignorant of those principles.”11 The study of science and home economics would, Richards hoped, make housekeeping into a profession. A 1890 editorial in the New England Kitchen Magazine proclaimed, “We need to exalt the profession of home making to see that it is as dignified and requires as much intel- ligence as other professions.”12 Science and technology would be the key to elimi- nating household drudgery. As Ellen Richards explained, “The woman who boils potatoes year after year, with no thought of the how or why, is a drudge, but the cook who can compute the calories of heat which a potato of given weight will yield, is no drudge.”1
The so-called philosopher of home economics, Caroline Hunt, clearly delin- eated the new role of women as consumers. Her interests in science and social reform paralleled those of Ellen Richards. Born in Chicago in 1865, Hunt entered Northwestern University in 1881 and, after interrupting her studies to teach high school, graduated in 1888. After teaching high school for several more years, she returned to Northwestern University to study chemistry. While at Northwestern, she lived with Jane Addams at Hull House and engaged in studies of newly arrived immigrants, including The Italians in Chicago: A Social and Economic Study (1897) and Dietary Studies in Chicago (1898). In 1896, she was hired to teach Domestic Economy and operate the cafeteria at Chicago’s Lewis Institute. Then in 1903, she was hired by the University of Wisconsin to organize and head a School of Domestic Science.14
While at Lewis Institute, Hunt equated women’s freedom with a change in household roles from producer to consumer. Women would have more free time for education, she argued, if they bought factory-made products rather than producing them in the home. For instance, a housewife could be a producer of soap or a consumer of factory-made soap. “The woman who today makes her own soap
222 The American School
instead of taking advantage of machinery for its production,” she wrote “enslaves herself to ignorance by limiting her time for study. The woman who shall insist upon carrying the home-making methods of today into the tomorrow will fail to lay hold of the possible quota of freedom which the future has in store for her”15
Throughout her writings, Caroline Hunt highlights the importance of the transi tion of the household tasks from that of production to consumption. For Hunt this transition was part of a larger process of industrialization and job specialization Comparing the past to existing conditions in a paper that she read at the 1904 Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, Hunt argued, “The home has delegated to the school not only the technical but also the general education of the child’ to the factory the manufacture of clothing, of furniture, and of house furnishings “16 Although the responsibilities of the household were changing, she contended, they still played an important role in society. Households were still responsible for raising the child to school age and teaching morality. Plus, Hunt added, homes were responsible for education about beauty and what she called “rational sociability.”
Rational sociability, according to Hunt, was an important aspect of the educa- tion of the consumer. From her perspective, the consumer had a social responsibil- ity to influence producers regarding their treatment of workers and the sanitary production of food products. In her discussion of higher education at the 1906 Lake Placid Conference, she argued that “home economics, if considered as pri- marily a training for intelligent consumption, should be introduced into the college education.” She defined intelligent consumption as demonstrating a concern for the general welfare of society. “The wise consumer,” she told the conference “has in mind not only his own advantage, but the welfare of those who make, transport and care for the commodities he uses.”18 The consumer, from this perspective must be educated into an awareness of the conditions of workers This added a social reform aspect to the role of consumption. “He [the wise consumer] thinks of himself as responsible, not only for the happiness and well being but also for the continued efficiency and social usefulness of the producer. He hopes that by his own use of wealth he may so direct human energy as to educate the worker and to increase the world’s resources.”19
Arguing that home economics should be introduced into the college curricu- lum “primarily [as] a training for intelligent consumption,” Hunt listed the need tor food, shelter, clothing, cleanliness, and beauty as the focus of this study20 Food courses were well defined, she argued, but instruction on the satisfaction of the other needs had to be expanded. In a telling statement of her vision of the future role of women, Hunt argued, “There is … an important way, other than thru [sic] purchase of food, in which women control a large amount of human energy, and that is thru [sic] buying and using what may be called art products including clothing and house furnishing. We feel, I am sure, that the college should give students an intelligent attitude with reference to the responsibilities arising from their consumption of these products.”21
Hunt envisioned college-educated women finding time for engaging in social reform movements by consuming rather than producing household goods In other words women would be freed to engage in “municipal housekeeping.” Released from household chores, women could apply their education, particularly from home
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 223
economics, to protecting the household from deleterious industrial and social prac- tices. She called this “Woman’s Public Work for the Home.”22 At the 1907 Lake Placid Conference she argued that when women are “forced by their responsibility for the family welfare into a fight for a public milk supply of assured purity, and are unsuccessful in the fight, we may take this as an indication that young women now in college should be taught to seek and to overcome the difficulties which lie in the way of the present accomplishment of this much needed reform.”
Hunt related freedom from food preparation to the rise of democratic thought and an emphasis on freedom for the individual. Under democracy, she contended, individual freedom meant enhanced opportunities for women rather than absence of restraints. Freedom for women, Hunt argued, required passing “over to public enterprise the work of food preparation and the responsibility for the care of houses, thus releasing in woman’s life energy for individualization.”24
Ellen Richards and Caroline Hunt’s hopes seemed to be realized with the rapid spread of home economics courses in public schools and colleges. According to Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, 20 percent of high schools offered courses by 1916-1917, and the number of college students enrolled in courses increased from 213 in 1905 to 17,778 in 1916. Most of those enrolled in college courses were preparing to be home economics teachers.25 The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 ensured the spread of home economics courses to public schools and universities. This federal legislation provided support for home economics teachers in public schools to prepare girls for the occupation of homemaker. In turn, this required the hiring of home economic instructors on college campuses to train teachers. These college and university instructors also trained cooks for hospitals, school cafeterias, and other institutional settings. Home economists also expanded their careers by becoming researchers in food technology at private companies and universities, and consultants to private industry for product development and sales. The vocational emphasis of the Smith-Hughes Act tended to compromise the role of home
224 The American School
economists as scientists. Historian Rima Apple concluded, “In the early twentieth century, women who wanted to pursue careers in scientific research were frequently counseled to study home economics…. As home economics units became increas- ingly involved with teacher training for public school instruction . . . [this] lessened the perceived significance of the scientific aspects of home economics.”26
SCHOOL CAFETERIAS, THE AMERICAN CUISINE, AND PROCESSED FOODS
Remember school cafeteria and hospital food? A major contribution of home economics was the creation of an American cuisine in school cafeterias and hos- pitals, and an emphasis on a diet based on processed foods. Working in school cafeterias and hospital kitchens, home economists hoped to Americanize the diet of immigrants. For example, an early-twentieth-century study found that Italian immigrants in Chicago were staying away from hospitals because of hospital food. Horrified, home economists tried to adjust their menus by making a “few harmless concessions” to immigrant tastes during the initial parts of the hospital stay. Later, food planners hoped, immigrants could be weaned from their traditional foods to the solid and healthy fare of the hospital kitchen. It was suggested that “Perhaps the treatment of an Italian during this period of change should be studied much as the treatment of an inebriate being won from his strong drink is studied.”27 A similar attempt to change the eating habits of immigrant children occurred in school cafeterias.
In Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century, Laura Shapiro credits home economists with the development of a distinctive American cuisine. She argues that during the latter part of the nineteenth century home economists “made American cooking American, transforming a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes.”28 Reflecting on the puritanical quality of the teachings and writings of early home economists, Shapiro wrote, “But to enjoy food, to develop a sense for flavors, or to acknowl- edge that eating could be a pleasure in itself had virtually no part in any course, lecture, or magazine article.”29
Home economists helped develop and sell the new American diet of prepack- aged foods. In public school and college classes, they taught how to prepare the new American diet. As researchers, they did pioneer work in food technology that resulted in the development of new food products and made possible the prolif- eration of fast-food chains. They helped manufacturers develop and sell new gad- getry for the home, such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines.30 And they helped to make school and hospital cafeteria food healthy, inexpensive, and bland. Through the school cafeteria, they hoped to persuade immigrant children to abandon the diet of their parents for the new American cuisine.
The new American diet resulted, in part, from Ellen Richards’s research at MIT and her work with the New England Kitchen and the Boston School of Housekeeping. Richards was not alone at the New England Kitchen and the Boston School of Housekeeping in promoting the belief that improper diet and
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 225
household management were undermining society. “Is it not pitiful, this army of incompetent wives,” declared domestic scientist M. V. Shailer in an 1898 issue of New England Kitchen Magazine, “whose lack of all knowledge of domestic sci- ence is directly and indirectly the means of filling our prisons, asylums, reforma- tories and saloons.”32 This feeling echoed earlier claims by Juliet Corson, the superintendent of the New York Cooking School. In 1877, Corson wrote a book- let titled Fifteen Cent Dinners for Workingmen’s Families. Corson claimed that “The laborer who leaves home in the early morning, after an ill-cooked breakfast, and carries in his basket soggy bread and tough meat for his luncheon, is apt to return at night tired and cross, not unfrequently he tries, en route, to cure his discomfort at a neighboring saloon.”
Portending the future marketing of packaged and frozen dinners, Ellen Richards helped found the New England Kitchen in 1890. The founders hoped to improve the lives of working and poor people by providing already prepared sanitary and economical food that would have consistent flavor and texture. Richards envisioned a neighborhood establishment that would prepare and sell food. The establishment would be educational because buyers could observe the sanitary conditions and cooking methods. Also, buyers would learn to expect the food, cooked under scientific conditions, to always taste the same.
Richards’s dream included the standardization of American eating habits. This standardization was made possible by the work of Fannie Farmer and the Boston Cooking School. The Boston Cooking School was opened in 1879 and by the 1890s became a training ground for public school cooks with a curriculum that included Psychology, Physiology and Hygiene, Bacteriology, Foods, Laundry Work, the Chemistry of Soap, Bluing, and Starch, and Cookery Applied to Public School Work. Fannie Farmer joined the Boston Cooking School in 1888. Legend has it that standardized measurements were born when Marcia Shaw asked Fannie Farmer what it meant to measure out “butter the size of an egg” and “a pinch of salt.”34 In 1896, Fannie Farmer’s cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, appeared and quickly became a national best seller. A major innovation in Farmer’s book was the use of leveled measurements, gaining her the epithet “Mother of Level Measurements.” Farmer wrote, “A cupful is measured level. A tablespoonful is measured level. A teaspoonful is measured level.”
Ellen Richards’s dreams of prepackaged and standardized meals spread across the country. Jane Addams sent a settlement worker from Chicago to learn Richards’s methods and created a similar kitchen at Hull House. Another kitchen opened in Providence, and Richards was invited to create a New England Kitchen at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The exhibit was lined with food charts, menus, diagrams, and consumerist mottoes, such as “Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not?”36
After the World’s Fair, the New England Kitchen focused its efforts on selling prepared foods to Boston’s nine public high schools and to office workers. In 1895, Richards helped to create in the Boston school system a model program for public school cafeterias. Prior to 1895, janitors in Boston schools were responsible for the lunch program. Using new theories on nutrition, sanitation, and food prepara- tion, Richards and her cooking colleagues introduced the new American diet to
226 The American School CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 227
Boston schoolchildren.37 These efforts set the stage for trained domestic scientists to take over school cafeterias to ensure that students received healthy and sanitary foods. The other focus was on hospital food. Richards declared that “no better school of diet could be found than an intelligently managed hospital.”38
In both schools and hospitals, cafeterias were to serve the double function of supplying nutritional food and changing people’s diets. Of primary concern to Protestant reformers was changing what they believed was the harmful diet of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Home economists believed that immigrants were harmed by foods that required long periods of digestion These scientific cooks were guided by a timetable created in the 1820s by an American army surgeon who studied a young man with a hole in his stomach caused by a hunting accident. The surgeon suspended food on a string in the man’s stomach to determine the speed of digestion. According to this experiment, pork turned out to be the most difficult to digest and clear broth and rice were the easiest 39
Concern about rates of digestion had a limiting effect on the role of spices in cooking. In The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning, Ellen Richards argued that spices did have a role in stimulating digestive juices but warned against heavy seasonings because they might wear out the digestive tract. In her words spices should be “just enough to accomplish the purpose.”40 Based on concerns about digestion, menus were created that balanced the digestive aspects of one food against another. For instance, it was proposed that first servings should include easily digestible items, such as oysters and white fish, that would prepare the gastric juices for the more difficult meat dishes. The result of concerns about digestion were recipes and menus that were noted for their blandness and lack of sensitivity to taste.
The development of this new American diet was directly linked to the image of the new woman. As home economists invaded school and hospital cafeterias with their gospel of scientific cookery, they saw the possibility of freeing the
American woman from home cooking and making it possible for her to extend her education. Ellen Richards believed that prepared foods, like those served by the New England Kitchen, would increase women’s freedom.
In addition, the new American diet was associated with the so-called democ- ratization of domesticity. Home economics leaders believed that the school caf- eteria and public school courses would unite students from differing social-class backgrounds under a single standard of domesticity. In the school cafeteria and in food preparation instruction in home economics classes, students were to develop similar tastes. Girls from lower-class backgrounds were to be brought up to the same standard of cooking and cleaning as upper-class girls, while, in turn, upper-class girls were to learn the arts normally practiced by their household help. The statement of a supervisor of cooking in the New York public schools exempli- fies this democratic leveling. The female student, the supervisor observed, “is wonderfully interested in the bacteria of the dishcloth, and the ice box, and the garbage pail, and when she becomes mistress of a home these things will receive her attention as well as the parlor, library, and music room.” Home economists hoped that standardized cooking and shared attitudes about housework and sanitation would open the door to a more democratic society.
Prepared food, it was believed, would mean freedom from cooking and liberation of women along with supplying the family with a sanitary, nutritious, and balanced diet. In choosing the path of prepared food, the housewife shifted her emphasis from producer to consumer. Ellen Richards projected this liberating role for prepared food in a 1900 article titled “Housekeeping in the Twentieth Century.” In her dream home, where the purchase of cheap mass-produced furniture allowed more money for “intel- lectual pleasures,” the pantry was filled with a large stock of prepared foods—mainly canned foods and bakery products. Richards’s dream pantry was based on the reality of a growing industry for canned foods. As early as the 1820s, William Underwood sold meats packed in bottles, and in 1856 Gail Borden patented a method for con- densing milk and preserving it with sugar. By the 1870s, the technology for canning meats was perfected. In the 1870s, H. J. Heinz sold crocked pickles, horseradish, and sauerkraut, and a decade later the company expanded its product list to include cooked macaroni products and vegetables. In the 1880s, the Franco-American Com- pany began to distribute canned meals. And in 1897, Campbell’s introduced canned soups after the development of a method for condensing the product. According to Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “By the turn of the century [nineteenth to twentieth], canned goods were a standard feature of the American diet. . . [including] processed foods of all kinds-packed dry cereals, pancake mixes, crackers and cookies machine- wrapped in paper containers, canned hams, and bottled corned beef.”42
In Richards’s imaginary description, a pneumatic tube connected to the pan- try was to speed canned and packaged food to the kitchen, where the wife simply heated up the meal. In addition, the meal would be accompanied by store-bought bread. Home economists believed that homemade bread and other bakery goods, besides being unsanitary, required an inordinate amount of preparation time and that therefore there should be greater reliance on factory-produced bread products. Ellen Richards dismissed the issue of taste with the comment, “I grant that each family has a weakness for the flavor produced by its own kitchen bacteria, but
I
228 The American School
that is a prejudice due to lack of education.”43 People would stop worrying about taste, she argued, when they fully realized the benefits of the superior cleanliness and consistency of factory kitchens and bakeries. In a 1900 book, The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science, Ellen Richards provided another version of her vision of the commodification of housework. “Housekeeping,” she explained, “no longer means washing dishes, scrubbing floors, making soap and candles; it means spending a given amount of money for a great variety of ready-prepared articles and so using commodities as to produce the greatest satisfaction and the best possible mental, moral, and physical results.”44
THE PLAY MOVEMENT
As home economists were extending the schools’ reach into the household and family diet, other educators were attempting to regulate children’s play in efforts to promote healthy living and reduce juvenile crime. This approach to curing urban social problems began in the 1880s with the development of small sandlots for children, and it reached a high point with the establishment of the Chicago park system in 1904. Between 1885 and 1895, sandlots were constructed in con- gested areas of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. These play areas were designed for children under twelve years of age and usually included a kindergarten program. One student of the movement reports that the dominant motive for establishing sandlots was “to keep children off the street and out of mischief and vice.”45
A major result of the play movement was that the school became respon- sible for the after-school play of urban children. For instance, in 1895 the chair- man of the Advisory Committee on Small Parks of New York City asked the police to indicate on a map the areas of high rates of juvenile crime. After the committee found that all areas with newly founded parks had a decreasing crime rate, it attempted to speed the development of parks by having the city adopt the following law: “Hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the City of New York without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same.”
In addition to protecting children from bad influences in the streets, play was to protect individuals from the nervous strain of urban living. In 1917, Henry S. Curtis, an organizer of the Playground and Recreation Association and former supervisor of the playgrounds of the District of Columbia, summarized the reasons for the widespread movement to establish playgrounds and parks in the United States. In urban areas, children confined to schools and adults trapped in factories and busi- nesses needed fresh air and the opportunity to exercise their bodies in order to avoid “the rapid increase of insanity and the growing instability of the nervous system.” But, according to Curtis, “it has not been these reasons that have weighed most strongly with the people that have promoted the movement.” Rather, he stated, the dominant motive and major concern of the leaders of the play move- ment was the fact that there was “little for the children to do in the cities, and that in this time of idleness the devil has found much for idle hands to do. …
CHAPTER 8: Growth of the Welfare Function of Schools 229
The home seems to be disappearing, and crime, despite an increasingly effective police and probation system, is increasing everywhere.”46
Like the kindergarten, the playground was to replace the socializing influence of family life supposedly lost in the growth of urban America. In addition to provid- ing recreation and physical activity, the playground was to teach good habits, such as cleanliness, and contribute to the general health of the community. The develop- ment of small parks included the construction of elaborate recreational and bathing facilities. For example, in 1898 Boston created a bath department as part of its city administration. This department had control of the city beaches, the floating baths, and the municipal bathhouses. The floating baths were platforms supporting a row of dressing rooms around an open area of water. In 1899, Boston had fourteen float- ing baths, two swimming pools, and seven shower baths. In New York, floating baths were started in 1876, and by 1899 a total of fifteen had been built. A campaign was waged in New York in the 1890s to increase the number of shower baths available because they were more usable during the winter than the floating baths were.
It was logical that this aspect of the playground movement would also become a school activity. The first reported school bath was a shower opened in a Boston school in 1889. Lawrence Cremin reports in The Transformation of the School that “the teachers of New York, for example, found themselves giving hundreds of baths each week. The syllabi said nothing about baths, and teachers themselves wondered whether bathing was their charge. But there were the children and there were the lice.” 7 The addition of the shower room to the public school symbolized the expansion of the school as a social agency.
The playground movement was more than just an attempt to reduce urban crime and supplement the socializing influence of the family. The leaders of the movement believed that directed play was necessary for producing the types of adults required by corporate industry. An important concept in this argument is that of directed play as opposed to free play. The early leaders of the play move- ment did not want to establish playgrounds and parks where adults and children would come to play without guidance; rather, they believed that the state should interfere and direct play toward social ends. Play movement leaders like Joseph Lee and Henry Curtis wanted organized play to produce future workers who would be good cooperative citizens. Therefore, playground games and activities were organized to produce a sense of team spirit, habits of cooperation, and a willingness to play by the rules. In other words, play was viewed as another method of social control.48
SUMMER SCHOOL
The establishment of summer, or vacation, school was another means of extend- ing the influence of the school over children’s lives. Cambridge, Massachusetts, was one of the first cities to propose a vacation school, or summer school. In 1872, its school committee reported the need for a vacation school because summer was “a time of idleness, often of crime, with many who are left to roam the streets, with no friendly hand to guide them, save that of the police.” The superintendent
230 The American School
of the same school district was still asking for a summer school as an inexpensive form of police control when he wrote in his school report in 1897, “The value of these schools consists not so much in what shall be learned during the few weeks they are in session, as in the fact that no boy or girl shall be left with unoccupied time. Idleness is an opportunity for evil-doing. . . . Thpisf sr-h^^- «~” Reform c^Vi^—1- -‘
.«e u^ i^w weexs ^v/u, as in me ract that no boy or girl shall be left with unoccupied
time. Idleness is an opportunity for evil-doing. . . . These schools will cost money. Reform schools also cost money.”
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