The elementary school covering a period of eight years, the most common type of graded school building in towns and small cities, is the eight-room schoolhouse — one room for each grade. The heating, ventilation and light ing of such a building has become an important problem. This problem is rendered much more complex in cities where the plan must be en larged to accommodate from 1,000 to 4,000 pu pils. A typical classroom in such a building should be approximately 24 by 32 feet in dimen sions, and from 13 to 14 feet in height; it should be lighted entirely from one of its longer sides, the windows reaching to the ceilings; about 2,000 cubic feet of pure warm air per hour should be provided for each pupil; and each room should be provided with a convenient wardrobe. By the use of steam indirect heating, supplemented by ((plenum* and fans run by steam or electric power, it has been found practicable to meet the foregoing condi tions of heating and ventilating. Practically all of the modern city school buildings secure these most desirable ends. The buildings are usually an architectural ornament to the neighborhood in which they stand. It has gradually come about, therefore, that the public school is one of the best-housed institutions of modern so ciety. In the poorer districts of large cities, the school buildings are the palaces of the people; they are, moreover, the places where the chil dren of the slums find warmth, light, pure air, beauty, and sympathetic humane treatment from their teachers. It is here that their hearts are warmed, their minds developed and supplied with useful and inspiring knowl e; it is here that they are enabled to rise to hi er planes of living, and to prepare themselves or a worthier citizenship than their humble origin would seem to warrant. In well-to-do districts of the city, the same beneficent physical surroundings contribute more than any other instrumentality of society to develop the best that there is in democracy.
The Sex of the Teaching For the first time in history, society has, since the be ginning of the 19th century, undertaken to edu cate all its children, boys and girls alike. Before that time only certain classes of boys were edu cated, invariably by men teachers. With the new duty there appeared a new means, namely, the employment of women as teachers. So long as women remained uneducated, it occurred to no one, least of all the women themselves, that they could teach. $o long as they could find productive labor in the home, as they could un til steam-power and machinery drove industries to the factory, women felt no especial need of a new calling. But when remunerative labor for women failed in the home, when the schools be gan to educate them along with their brothers, and when the new social undertaking of uni versal education began to clamor for more and cheaper teachers, then it was that the world awoke to the fact that it had in its midst a new and hitherto unused force — its young unmar ried women. Women began to be employed as teachers in large numbers in the United States before 1850, especially in the New England States, where the first normal schools were es tablished. The period of the Civil War saw a rapid increase, owing to the natural withdrawal of the young men in order to enlist as soldiers. Since the close of the war the percentage of women in the schoolroom has steadily and rap idly increased, throughout the Union, until in the cities, at least, men are rarely found as teachers in the grades. They are still employed
to some extent in rural schools, especially in the newer States. The following table shows the increase in the number of women teachers in 13 typical States since 1875: The women now number 802 per cent of all the teachers in public elementary schools of the whole Union, while in city elementary schools they rarely number less than 90 per cent of all teachers. In New York State high schools about two-thirds of the teachers are women. The same phenomenon is seen in foreign coun tries, but the increase in the number of women teachers there has in general been less rapid. In Great Britain and Ireland the increase has been from 54.3 per cent in 1870 to 75.3 per cent in 1900. If one may judge by the attendance at the normal schools, the number of men and women in French elementary schools is about equal. In Germany, as a whole, less than 20 per cent of all elementary teachers are women. In Italy, however, 93 per cent of the students of normal schools are young women, though the women form only about 58 per cent of the whole elementary teaching force. In the 11 State normal schools of Massachusetts there are 308 men and 2,811, or 90 per cent, women stu dents.
The large, almost exclusive, employment of women as elementary teachers is the newest thing in our civilization. It is difficult as yet to interpret its full significance. There is no doubt that society has been well served at very small expense. The economic motive con stantly appealing to communities that do not like high taxes is that they can get better teach ing from women for a small sum than they can from men. A first-class woman teacher, they say, is always to be preferred to a second-rate man at the same salary. The assumption is that vigorous, active, well-prepared men can do bet ter financially out of than in the school, and that only second-rate men will accept women's salaries. Ultimately, if the feminization of the school should prove not to be for the best wel fare of society, it is pretty evident that the addi tional cost will not prevent the employment of a suitable number of men. The public school system may be said to be now in its "brick and mortar* stage, for it is expending vast sums to house and equip the school. When this has been done, the resources of the community may easily be turned to the improvement of the teaching force. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard University argues that the people ought not to spend less upon the minds of their children than they do upon their food. Were this stand ard attained, it is probable that school support would be quadrupled. So far as present ex perience teaches, it seems evident that for the first four or five years of school life women are the natural and the more efficient teachers. When it comes to the early years of puberty, society still holds theoretically that the influ ence of men is essential to the proper unfold ing of the minds and characters of both boys and girls. It is this conviction which, for the most part, enables the non-sectarian private school to maintain its existence in the more wealthy communities. It is probable, notwith standing the aforementioned theory that men are indispensable as teachers of youth, that the availability of women and the difficulty of hold ing the right type of men in such positions will confirm the present custom of almost exclu sively employing women for grade teaching.