To add interest to the work, exhibitions should be given at stated times so that all may learn from each other and the best be the model for all. The school fairs in Yamhill, Polk, Benton, Lane, Wasco, and Crook Counties, together with the school and home industrial work done at Eugene, have convinced me most thoroughly that these plans are practicable, and that school work and home work, school play and home play, and love for parents and respect for teachers and fellow pupils can best be fostered by a more complete coöperation between school and home, so that the whole child is taken into account at all times.
After the home-credit schools of Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Conklin were well under way, I received many inquiries about the home credit idea. As I was then State Superintendent, I had a pamphlet printed by the State Office, describing the workings of the plan, and had it distributed to Oregon teachers. Fifteen thousand copies were also printed for Mr. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, in the summer of 1912, and distributed by the National Bureau to superintendents and teachers throughout the United States. Since this pamphlet has been out of print there have been many inquiries sent me about home credit, and I hope that this book may answer some of them.
The brain and the hand, too long divorced, and each mean and weak without the other; use and beauty, each alone vulgar; letters and labor, each soulless without the other, are henceforth to be one and inseparable; and this union will lift man to a higher level.--G. STANLEY HALL.
The idea of giving school credit for home work first occurred to me when I was a high-school principal in McMinnville, Oregon, in 1901. Often, in the few years that I had been teaching, I had felt keenly a lack of understanding between school and home. As I was thinking over this problem, and wondering what could be done, I chanced to meet on the street the mother of one of my rosiest-cheeked, strongest-looking high-school girls. I saw that the little mother looked forlorn and tired. There was a nervous twitch of the hand that adjusted the robes about the crippled child she was wheeling in a baby buggy. I had frequently noticed that Mary, the daughter, who was one of the very poorest students in her class, was on the streets the greater part of the time after school hours. I thought, "What value can there be in my teaching that girl quadratic equations and the nebular hypothesis, when what she most needs to learn is the art of helping her mother?"