The New Student's Reference Work/Vacation Schools

Vacation Schools are the result of a recent extension of the public-school system in New York City, Chicago, Newark and a very few other progressive centers of population. They originated in New York as a philanthropic experiment conducted by a private society. It was recognized by the city authorities that the success of the experiment was worthy of public recognition; and playgrounds and vacation schools were accordingly established in connection with the public-school system. The vacation schools of New York are administered by a district superintendent and a number of special directors under his supervision. In the vacation schools manual and artistic activities are exercised to a high degree. Music and dancing are provided for on roof-gardens where the open, fresh air may be enjoyed. There are even baths where swimming is taught. But the vacation school is by no means a place for recreation merely, unless the term recreation be extended so as to include many branches of useful work. In New York there were in 1902 54 vacation schools, a number now somewhat increased. In these schools are taught basketry, bench work, Venetian iron-work, chair-caning, carpentry, fret-sawing, whittling, work in burned wood and leather, sewing, embroidery, crocheting, millinery and domestic science. Often so much taste and ability are shown in one or another of these directions that a youth or girl finds his or her natural vocation through the vacation school. There are classes in the vacation schools even in the care of the sick, of the accidentally injured and of babies. Already there are indications in city tenement life that the art and culture disseminated by the vacation schools are entering into the lives of the people. Home conditions improve; and it is much, moreover, to give healthy and happy occupation to the youth who would else be subjected to the idle and vicious influences of the streets. In 1902 the schools cost the city $275,000; but this sum was applied to the maintenance of the evening recreation centers and afternoon playgrounds as well as the vacation schools properly so called. The latter essentially are summer institutions which meet for five mornings a week during a term of six weeks. The evening recreation centers, whose work is elsewhere described, are open during all the year. (See Playgrounds.) The afternoon playgrounds are open for systematic sports during two months of the school vacation. At the back of the movement for vacation schools is the feeling that, in large cities at least, the prolonged summer vacation is not without its mental and moral dangers, springing chiefly from the lack of occupation of the young.