When we give home work its proper recognition, and the child comes to understand that there are different degrees of efficiency and skill in doing it, the work will take on a new color. Many are the reports that have come in from parents in home credit districts saying, "There is nothing left for us to do in the way of chores. The children used to seem indifferent about the work, and did as little as they could. Now the boys get up before we do instead of waiting to be called, rush downstairs to make the fires, and go at the chores, while the girls go into the kitchen and start breakfast."
While youth is the time for play, yet children like to work too. Since we have had the school gardens in Portland we often find the playgrounds vacant, and the gardens near by well filled with children at work. We often hear that children should not have responsibilities; yet we find that the successful men of to-day are the ones that bore burdens early. A number of successful business men in Portland were recently talking together of their boyhood days, and each one said that he had had to assume a great deal of responsibility before he was twelve years old.
The importance of "percentages," "credits," "grades," or "standings" in the minds of school children, especially in the upper grammar classrooms, is surprising to a stranger. Even the drawing teacher is begged to give marks. "But there are the drawings, arranged in the order of their merit, on the screen. They can see which are the best!" No, they want a mark. "To raise our standings," they say.
[Illustration: WORK CREDITED AT SCHOOL, WESTON, OREGON]
Of course, we all feel that "marks" in school have but a temporary purpose; that they are to furnish a motive to serve until a better motive can be substituted. Home work may be encouraged at first by the wish for "higher standings," or a prize, or a holiday; but many other influences are likely to come in to keep it up.
This is not the place to discuss the teaching without marks that is practiced in a few modern schools. In most schools the system of giving percentages is firmly established. The honoring of achievement in the schools, by marks or otherwise, has always been a great power in helping the school studies move along. But only part of the available energy has been used. There are vast reservoirs of power which may be put at the service of education and which as yet have scarcely been tapped.