Schools for Children's Teachers

Nahla Marwa's name is not new to The Woman's Voice, but this is the first article of hers the magazine has published since her departure for America last summer, where she is now specializing in child education — the subject for which she worked long before her departure, and for which those who know her are certain she was created.

In New York State there is a large number of colleges of education whose task is to graduate women and men teachers for the various schools.

In these colleges the student, man or woman, spends four or five years after completing secondary studies in study, learning, and testing, in preparation for entering the teaching profession. This is a general law that applies to every person who thinks of taking up teaching as a profession, throughout the entire United States.

Some of these colleges are devoted to elementary teaching and kindergartens, and some specialize in secondary and higher teaching. All these colleges belong to the state, and their number exceeds thirty in New York State alone. The same holds in every state, in proportion to its population. Every person who wishes to teach in an elementary school must spend these four years in study and in experimenting with the newest methods under the supervision and care of professors specialized in education. Each of these colleges has an elementary school attached to it, in which the students conduct their experiments and apply the theories and rules they study. This school is in truth a laboratory, most completely and modernly equipped for application, experiment, and testing.

It appears that the American state, like the states of the other advanced countries, took care to establish these colleges after it became clear to it what great importance specialization in this branch possesses. Nor did it stop at this; it enacted a law forbidding all schools, without exception, to accept any candidate to teach in them unless he has completed his studies in one of those colleges which they call the "State Teachers College." Even if a student has studied at the greatest universities and graduated with a doctorate in a branch other than education, he is not accepted as a teacher in an elementary school unless he returns to one of the said colleges, specializes there for four new years, and obtains its diploma.

The elementary school and the kindergarten are a fundamental element in the educational and cultural preparation of the rising generation here in America. Elementary education is compulsory up to the age of sixteen; and the elementary school, in addition to its capable specialist teachers, is equipped with all the means and instruments of study that pupil and teacher need, in school and outside it. Every school likewise has a special budget of its own, from which it spends on whatever supplies and needs may arise, without delay or neglect — and without extravagance or waste, of course!... For the Americans consider that the first and most important care must be given to children and youngsters in the years of the elementary stage, because this care makes of the nation's little ones lion cubs in whom good may be hoped for, and prepares them to be the sound men of the future.

The Americans' care for their little ones does not stop at the school; it goes much farther than that. In every city, large and small, and even in every village, there are playgrounds for children, and libraries for them

equipped with books suited to their ages, and gardens and cinema houses. They have everything the grown-ups have, but in a form that helps develop their minds and bodies and guarantees them a strong, sound upbringing — all under the supervision of trained specialists who carry out the tasks entrusted to them in the most complete fashion. All these houses and institutions are paid for by the state or the municipalities; they are therefore public, frequented by all the children of the nation alike, without distinction or discrimination. And here, where children grow up in one atmosphere and one environment, there grows up the democracy which has become, without exaggeration, one of the constituents of life for the American individual.

Truly — and I say this with all regret — we are still walking on bare feet in the social and educational field, where others have mounted the automobile, the train, and the airplane.

How beautiful is the sign that reads "Children's Library" or "Children's Playground," and all the other houses and gardens there are! When, one wonders, will our children have all of this?

Some time ago I read in the local newspaper a small announcement of a story hour in one of the children's libraries. On Saturday morning I went to the library at the appointed time, and there I found myself before fifty children seated in a circle, and in their midst a pleasant young lady who began reading them a story from a picture book. No sooner had she finished reading the story than the turn came for talk and questions, the little ones asking them and the young lady answering. How lovely such an hour is! And is anything sweeter than a great cinema hall when it fills with a thousand children watching films made specially for their ages? And is anyone happier than the children who know they have a playground of their own to go to in their free time?

All of this has been prepared with the utmost care so as to help the children profit from every minute of their time, to guide them in the right and proper

direction, and to provide the ideal upbringing for them, because they are the foundation on which the country's hopes rest. This is the Americans' firm belief, and an excellent belief it is.

After this I should like to cast a brief glance at our public (state) elementary schools. Let us enter one of them — and what do we see? Rooms prepared for penning up these poor little ones, despised by the grown-ups. Yes, they are despised, and everything proclaims that we do not respect our children and take no account of them whatever. We do not look upon them as members of society whom we are preparing to bear its responsibilities when they grow up; we hand them over to the servant girl and to the street, leaving them to flounder in manifest error.

Everything that has been prepared for children in our country has come from the hand of one of the women's associations, which exert their efforts to collect money to carry out their projects. All they have accomplished so far is great, but it is little, owing to the lack of sufficient assistance available to them.

The thing that made me grieve and laugh at once is what I read in our newspapers recently about the government's intention to found a national university. In it I saw plainly our superficiality in looking at things, and the educational chaos in which our country flounders. I wished that our government would give some of its care to our elementary schools — that is, to the youngsters, to the children who are the hope of the country and the pillar of its future. Let us leave the university aside for the present, and begin by strengthening the foundation before the roof...

How I wish the government would think of founding a higher college to graduate capable teachers and educators and train them in the newest scientific methods. But it appears we are content with the present condition of our schools; otherwise we would think of renewing them and raising their standard and the morale of their teachers.

I do not blame the teacher at all; had the opportunity been given him to learn, he would have learned and acted. In vain do we try to raise the general standard of our country and our society while our schools remain as they are and our children stay neglected and despised.

Blessed is the people that gives first place to its children and its little sons: it is a people that works for life, for the future, for immortality.