VACATION SCHOOL. A term used, quite arbitrarily, to indicate a school kept in many American cities during the customary summer vacation for the children of the public schools. The term has no reference to the more advanced schools connected with universities and colleges or with popular educational institutions such as the Chautauqua (q.v.). though the motive for the establishment of these more advanced schools may be much the same. The use of the term as well as the institution itself is confined almost wholly to the United States, nor does it have any reference to the ordinary school term as extend ing through the summer months, as it does in the rural regions of many States. The vacation school is of very recent establishment, save in a few isolated instances, and owes its origin to the work of philanthropic societies in caring for the children of the poor of the larger cities during the extreme heat of the summer. While there are sporadic instances of such schools kept by these societies as early as 1866, when the Old First Church of Bolton conducted one, and there are even some instances of school boards providing for such work, as in Newark, N. J., in the same
year, the movement has become of importance only since 1898, when the Board of Education of the City of New York took over the schools pri marily founded by The Society for the Improve ment of the Condition of the Poor. During the summer of 1903 that city provided for 58 such schools, employing 1500 teachers, at a total ex pense of more than $100.000. At the present time all the large cities of the country and many of the small ones, to the extent of some 200 in all, support such schools. The work of the vacation school is of a much more practical nature than that of the ordinary session and is devoted more to constructive work by the child. Consequently manual training, housekeeping, sewing, together with nature work, local history, and geography, combined with excursions, form a prominent part of the curriculum.