CAPÍTULO 1 FUNDAMENTO TEÓRICO
1.3 SISTEMAS BASADOS EN VISIÓN ARTIFICIAL [12]
81
On November 1, 1915, 540 boys walked through the hand-carved archway, ascended the marble staircase, and entered Germantown High School’s sunlit assembly room. The young men who sat in the assembly room that morning were among the first students to attend the new Germantown High School. After addressing the boys about the importance of the day, Dr. Harry Keller, the head of the boys’ school, dismissed the male students and directed them to the east side of the school. One the boys had left, 800 girls passed through the beautiful archway, up the pristine staircase, and sat in the same seats that the boys had just used. In the assembly room, the girls listened carefully as Miss Mary Holmes, the head of the girls’ school, addressed them. When Holmes finished, the teachers quietly walked the girls to their classrooms on the west side of the school. Even though the city praised its new, modern co-educational facilities, school district officials still segregated Germantown High School students based on gender the moment they stepped into the school building.1 As the youth proceeded to their
respective corners of the building, the leaders of the high school campaign stood on the corner of Haines and High Street and celebrated this momentous occasion.
Germantown residents finally had what they had long fought for: a magnificent, modern high school building tucked away within the safe boundaries of their quaint, suburban community.2
This chapter examines the so-called glory years of Germantown High School’s history, 1914-1929. First, I will examine the creation of the school’s culture and curriculum to demonstrate how these elements satisfied the residents’ demands for a premier academic institution. In this section, school culture refers to the practices,
1 For a history of American co-education in a national context, see David B. Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot,
Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992).
2
“Germantown High School Opens,” November 4, 1915, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XXIXc, GHSOC; “Germantownʼs New High School,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 3, 1915.
82
routines, and norms that the school promoted, as well as the school’s curricular
and extra-curricular activities. School culture refers to the ideals that the school district, high school educators, Germantown residents, and its youth tried to cultivate in its young high school. My analysis shows how the school’s culture was generated both from the top-down—from the School District of Philadelphia, high school staff, and
Germantown residents—as well as from the bottom-up—from the students themselves.3
After examining the school’s culture, I investigate how the students, their families, and Germantown residents supported their new high school to ensure that the community had the institution it desired. In 1916, school district officials willingly admitted that they lacked the tax base necessary to meet the fiscal needs of the new, modern high schools springing up throughout the city. Germantown families and residents responded to this need addressing the demands placed on the high school through an array of financial and voluntary support. In many ways, this financial
support reflected the community’s proposal to raise private funds during the high school campaign.4 However, there was one clear difference. Individuals in the high school
campaign proposed the use of private funds to subsidize public education; once the school opened, local residents donated private funding to the school to ensure that this
3 My own understanding of culture stems from theoretical work, including Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, The Inheritors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Gayatri C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 24–29; Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 2 (May 2001): 202– 236.Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Kathleen M. Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men and Women in Colombiaʼs Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994); Kenda Mutongi, Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007).
4 “Germantown Men to Raise $500,000 for High School,” February 12, 1910, Evening Bulletin? George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Box 3 Schools, Public, GHS; “Citizens May Buy High School Site,” February, 11, 1910, Independent Gazette, George P. Darrow Scrapbook, Box 3 Schools, Public, GHS.
83 new institution possessed the financial support necessary to build one of a few premier academic institutions in the city.5
Creating the Premier Academic Institution the Campaign Leaders Desired
When the members of the Philadelphia Board of Public Education finally announced its decision to build a new high school in Germantown, the members of the Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, who had led the seven-year high school campaign, tried to influence the board’s decisions about faculty hires and building design. Initially, the campaign leaders expected the members of the board to defer to local residents to select the school principal and new teachers. At one point, the leaders of the campaign even contacted possible principal candidates without the board of education’s consent.6 After several lengthy debates and contentious discussions, the members of the GCHIA passed a resolution that limited the association’s role in school hires stating that the members would rely on “wisdom” of the members of the board of education to make the “best decision” for the school’s future.7
On April 6, 1915, the members of the board announced that they had selected Dr. Harry F. Keller as Germantown High School’s first principal. Even though he was not the GCHIA’s first choice, Keller met many of the criteria that the members of the association wanted the principal to have. Keller was born in Philadelphia in 1861, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1881, and earned a doctorate in
5
For the purposes of analyzing the legitimacy of Germantown High School, I will draw on the following social and political theory: Max Weber, Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity, ed. Stephen Kalberg, Modernity and Society 3 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005); David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965). There are several works that address institutional authority, which in Weberʼs theory is related to legitimacy, but with the exception of Kathryn M. Neckerman,
Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). these works do not examine the change in institutional legitimacy in a historical context.
6Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association Meeting Minutes, January 19, 1915. Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908-1929, GHSOC.
7
Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association Meeting Minutes, March 16, 1915. Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908-1929, GHSOC.
84
chemistry in Strassburg, Germany in 1888. He spent several years teaching chemistry at the all-male Central High School and had written several books on pedagogy. After careful deliberation, the board of education appointed Miss Mary Holmes to the girls’ school. Holmes had managed Germantown’s girls’ annex since 1910. Before that, she taught geology at the Philadelphia High School for Girls and served as the head of the science department at the Girls’ Commercial High School.8 The selection of these two individuals satisfied the members of the GCHIA. As teachers in the city’s elite schools, Keller and Holmes understood the importance of an academic curriculum, which made the association members feel confident that they would implement a similar course of study at the city’s newest high school.
8
“To Name Keller High School Head,” April 6, 1915, The Philadelphia Inquirer; “May 11, 1915,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1914 (Philadelphia: Walther Printing House, 1915); “Dr. H.F. Keller for High School Head,” April, 1915, Jane Campbell Scrapbook, Vol. XXVIIb, Page 132, GHSOC; Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association Meeting Minutes, October 1910, Box, Germantown and Chestnut Hill Improvement Association, Minutes, 1908-1929, GHSOC; “Report of the Principal of the William Penn High School for Girls,” Annual Report, 1910, p. 241.
85
Dr. Harry F. Keller, Germantown High School Yearbook, June 1922, GHS.
Miss Mary Holmes, Germantown High School Yearbook, June 1922, GHS.
The Board of Education designated Keller as high school’s principal and Holmes as the “assistant to the principal.” In this role, the Board of Education expected Holmes
86
to manage the administration of the girls’ school “under the direction of the
principal.”1 With these new titles, Keller earned the standard salary for principals in the
city while Holmes earned the maximum salary of a department chair in a girls’ school. In other words, she earned less money than the men who served as Germantown High School’s department chairs.2 The Board’s decisions clarified the school’s governance
structure and maintained the gendered salary differentials that existed in most American high schools during this period.3
After the members of the Board of Education appointed the administrators, they focused on hiring the faculty for the new high school. The members of the GCHIA
wanted faculty members who, like the new administrators, understood the importance of academic learning and the curricula that the city’s elite public high schools offered. To meet these demands, the Board hired experienced teachers who had worked at the elite, all-male Central High School and the elite, all-female Philadelphia High School for Girls to staff the faculty at Germantown High School.4 By staffing the school with leaders and
teachers who had worked at these elite schools, the Board provided the members of the GCHIA with the ingredients to create an academic institution for the community’s white, native-born, middle class residents. The members of the GCHIA had done what they could to create a school for Germantown’s middle class families, and now, they anxiously
1 “July 13, 1915,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1915 (Philadelphia: Walther
Printing House, 1915). “Mary S. Holmes, Teacher, Dies,” The Evening Bulletin, 1952 in Box 5, Public Schools, Folder, GHS Academic Matters, Germantown Historical Society.
2
“High School Head Chosen,” 1915 in Box 5, Public Schools, Folder, GHS Academic Matters, GHSOC; “July 13, 1915,” in The Journal of the Board of Public Education for the Year 1915 (Philadelphia: Walther Printing House, 1915); “Higher Pay for Miss Holmes,” 1921 in Box 5, Public Schools, Folder, GHS Academic Matters, GHSOC.
3 “Higher Pay for Miss Holmes,” 1921 in Box 5, Public Schools, Folder, GHS Academic Matters. 4
J. L Rury, Education and Womenʼs Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870-1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); John G. Richardson and Brenda Wooden Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching: 1870-1920.,” Work and Occupations: An
International Sociological Journal 10, no. 1 (February 1983): 81–100; Michael Apple, “Teaching and Womenʼs Work: A Comparative and Historical Analysis,” Teachers College Record 86, no. 3 (1985): 455– 473; Myra H. Strober and Audri Gordon Lanford, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching: Cross- Sectional Analysis, 1850-1880,” Signs 11, no. 2 (Winter 1986): 212–235.
87
waited to see whether these families wanted to send their children to the community’s new high school.
As the members of the GCHIA worked with the board of education to staff the school, Germantown families evaluated the benefits and limitations of sending their children to the community’s new high school. The families who lived in the community and decided to send their children to Germantown High School differed from those who did not send their children to the local high school. As economic recessions swept through the city, many families could not afford to lose the additional income that their youth provided, so they sent them to work as soon as they finished primary school.5 Data
gathered from yearbooks and the 1920 United States Census indicate that in 1920 Germantown High School graduates were primarily native-born, white youth whose fathers worked in the upper echelon of the labor market. More specifically, a logistic regression showed that Germantown youth were more likely to be high school graduates if their fathers were professionals than if their fathers were craftspeople, skilled laborers, service workers, or unemployed (p’s < 0.05, see figure 2.1).6
5 Pamela Barnhouse Walters and Philip OʼConnell, “The Family Economy, Work, and Educational
Participation in the United States, 1890-1940,” American Journal of Sociology 93, no. 5 (March 1988): 1116– 1152.
6
88
Figure 2.1 Fatherʼs Occupational Status, Germantown High School
Graduates & Community Youth, 1920
Source: Germantown High School Yearbooks, 1919-1922, GHS; ancestry.com
In addition to these occupational differences, the ethnic composition of
Germantown High School students differed when compared to the community youth. Native-born youth with native-born parents were more likely to graduate from
Germantown High School than immigrant youth (p < 0.001).7 Immigrant youth were
less likely to graduate from the high school because many of them had access to social networks that made it easier for them to find work on the labor market without a high school credential.8 In addition to these differences, many immigrant youth attended
7 See Figure 2.3a, Appendix, Chapter 2 Data and Analysis for the full results of the binary logistic regression.
Immigrant youth includes foreign-born youth or native-born youth with foreign-born parents.
8
89
Catholic schools in the city during this period instead of their local public schools making it less likely for them to be Germantown graduates (see figure 2.2).9
Figure 2.2 Nativity, Germantown High School Graduates & Community Youth,
1920
Source: Germantown High School Yearbooks, 1919-1922, GHS; ancestry.com
Finally, white youth were more likely to graduate from Germantown High School than black youth (p < 0.005).10 Black youth who lived in the community were less likely to graduate from Germantown High School for several reasons. Black residents in Philadelphia, like most cities, faced racial discrimination in the labor market and often had to settle for lower wages than their white counterparts. Even though black residents had slightly higher citywide school attendance rates than white residents in 1920 (92% versus 90%, respectively),11 many of these families had to rely on their high-school aged
9
James W. Sanders, The Education of an Urban Minority: Catholics in Chicago, 1833-1965 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
10
See Figure 2.3a, Appendix, Chapter 2 Data and Analysis for the results of the binary logistic regression.
11
Table 63, Bureau of Compulsory Education, General Summary, Year Ending June 20, 1920, The Board of Public Education, School District of Philadelphia, Statistical Reports of the Department of Instruction, Year Ending June 30, 1920, Philadelphia, Walther Printing House, 1920.
90
children to subsidize their family’s income. Many of these children left school
once they finished primary school and entered the labor market as unskilled laborers, factory hands, or domestics in one of the homes that lined the suburb’s pristine streets. African American families might have wanted their children to attend their new
neighborhood high school, but their family’s short-term financial needs often outweighed the long-term benefits of sending their children to high school.12
However, oral history evidence offers another reason to explain this finding. Archibald Childs, a black man who was born in Germantown on May 4, 1912, had attended public schools in Germantown during elementary school. One summer, he visited Germantown High School with his mother, Maude, a southern migrant who worked as a domestic and taught high school in a one-room, segregated school in the South before she married. When they met with staff at the school, the guidance counselor told them that she wanted to place Archibald in the commercial program at the high school. According to Childs, in the 1920s, most black students did not enroll in the high school’s prestigious academic program. Even though he had attended local public schools his entire life, Maude, who had finished her high school education in Virginia, sent Archibald to a segregated school in Virginia to finish high school and earn the academic degree she wanted him to have.13 Although many black families relied on their children’s labor to supplement their incomes, other black families refused to send their children to a high school where they would not receive the academic education that their children deserved.
12 V. P. Franklin, The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority
Community, 1900-1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 60–62. 13
Archibald Childs, interview by Louise Strawbridge, October 21, 1991, Germantown Between the Wars Collection, GHSOC.
91
Even though many youth in the community never attended the high
school, many Germantown families wanted their children to attend high school and earn their degrees. In 1920, these families had several schooling options. They could either send their children to the local high school, to the elite schools in the center of the city, or other educational institutions, such as private and parochial schools. As they considered their options, many of these families thought about the economic value of their son or daughter’s high school education during their high school years and beyond. They were consumers in an educational marketplace that offered a variety of goods with differing rates of return. The market value that they attached to their schooling options were related to their family’s short-term needs and their own hopes and beliefs about their child’s futures.14 Their short-term needs, schooling options, and future aims were deeply connected to their father’s occupational status and the child’s race, class, ethnicity, and gender. The choices that these families made about their child’s secondary schooling shaped Germantown High School’s culture and helped to establish its reputation as a premier suburban high school reserved primarily for white, middle class, native-born youth.
During the high school campaign, Germantown residents urged city officials to build a high school in their community so that their children, particularly their young daughters, could attend high school near their homes. Many of the residents were worried about the arduous commute to and from their quaint suburb to the city’s premier high schools that were located in the heart of the city’s center. Data from the school yearbooks indicate that residential geography influenced the educational decisions that these families made. Even though many Germantown youth traveled to
14 Much of my understanding about markets, consumerism, and education comes from David F. Labareeʼs
work, see David F. Labaree, Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); David F Labaree, The Making of an American High School: The