(reprint of an article by G. Derwood Baker, first principal of South Pasadena Junior High, which appeared in the Junior-Senior High School Clearinghouse, February, 1935.)

Beautification of the school has become the central motivating theme around which pupil morale is rallied at the South Pasadena Junior High School. Social control, care of the grounds, preservation of school property, pride in high achievement, all get much of their motivating force from the pride which the pupils feel in their beautification program, and from the conviction of the part of the student body that it is having a definite part in the creation of the school. Members of the student body genuinely feel that the school belongs to them. Graduates return to see what new developments have taken place and bring their friends to admire. Pupils and citizens have every reason to believe that this school may become one of the art treasures of Southern California.

The effect of this creative force can be best caught by a visit to the school. Upon entering, the visitor will sense the free atmosphere of the place. A member of the courtesy committee will greet him and offer assistance. First of all, his guide will want to show him the Fountain Court. Here is a small patio enclosed by classrooms and arcades. In each corner is a small informal garden dominated by a royal palm and cluttered with brightly blooming shrubs. In the center is a Spanish-tile fountain, spurting jets of water into the air to fall back again into the pool. On one of the walls is a ceramic plaque, created by one of the boys, representing a youth preoccupied with a book, with the legend: "A book’s a magic sort of thing that makes you sailor, chief, or king." The youthful guide will explain that the development of the patio is the work of a previous generation of students. One graduating class planted the garden. Another year, the art classes conceived the fountain. The mechanical-drawing pupils made the blue prints; boys did the excavating; the boys in the woodshop built the forms and mixed and poured the concrete. The tile was manufactured from student designs and an expert tile-setter was employed to do the tile-setting. The student body raised all the money for this enterprise. The guide will explain that it is all a part of a perennial beautification campaign. Beginning of the 1928, with the purchase of small ornaments for halls and stage, the student body has acquired the tradition of each year adding something to the beauty of the school. Every year a major beautification project is selected and the necessary funds for its fulfillment are raised.

Come now to the library. Here is a wall hanging, fourteen by nineteen feet, conceived and executed by the ninth-grade art students. After each pupil had submitted a design, the class combined the best ideas and made a full-scaled drawing on heavy detail paper. This outline was then transferred to linen. The outline was crayoned and ironed in for a color-margin and the intervening pattern painted with cold-water analin dyes. Pupils and art critics both agree that the library has been enriched by this beautiful hanging more than if a twelve hundred-dollar antique tapestry had been acquired.

Another beautification project is a mural, fourteen by forty-nine feet, covering an entire wall in the cafeteria. Again the project was the conception of the ninth-grade art class. The mural tells the story of "Foods of the Nations." Beginning on one side with Southern California orange pickers, the people of Mexico, Brazil, the South Seas, Japan, Persia, Africa, Italy, Russia and Norway, with their respective food contributions, are represented. Thirty-two pupils participated in applying the color to this wall, while a proud and admiring student body looked on with the feeling that it was acquiring a vested interest in the school.

The next school beautification project is found in the Theater Court. Here, in a perfect natural setting, are three mural panels, each ten by fourteen feet, done by one of America’s most brilliant young artists, Millard Sheets in the Italian primitive method on fresh plaster. The theme for these priceless possessions of the school, representing contemporary life in Southern California, was worked out by social-studies groups. Panel number one depicts "The Sea, Industry, and Trade," number two gives glimpses of Los Angeles and the complexities of city life, and number three combines the mountains and Mount Wilson’s astronomical observatory with rural agricultural occupations.

It was through a fortunate coincidence that these frescoes were acquired. A friend of the school invited Mr. Sheets to give the pupils advice on their beautification program. The young artist was so carried away by the achievements of the boys and girls themselves and by the possibilities afforded by these walls that he volunteered his services to produce the frescoes. A year and a half of his available spare time and that of his assistant, James Patrick, was devoted to the project.

Mr. Sheet’s effort was not wasted, for the art students caught the spirit of his work and wanted to attempt a fresco of their own. They have now completed two of four student frescoes depicting early California history. Panel number one shows the coming of the Spaniards, with Cabrillo trading with the Indians. Panel number four shows the coming of the tourists and the first railway train to the pueblo of Los Angeles. Panels two and three, to be completed this year, will depict the coming of the mission fathers and of the gold miners.

After this general survey of the grounds, during which the visitor should have caught something of the atmosphere of the school, let us go to the library. Here is a hive of activity. More than one hundred pupils are busily working. Teachers are walking about among them. One group of teachers and pupils is working over the picture file; another is browsing along the fiction shelves. The librarian tells us that a science, social studies, and an English class, with their teachers, are scheduled for the library this period. Under supervision, the pupils are looking up material necessary for the unit or work upon which they are engaged. The library is the nerve center of the school. It can seat a seventh of the school’s pupils and each period in the day one or more classes are to be found at work here. The study hall, for ninth-grade pupils, is located directly across from the library and the pupils pass back and forth freely. The librarian is a fully trained person who not only assists teachers in arranging material in their units of work, but also keeps them informed concerning professional material in which they should be interested. Near the entrance to the library stand an interesting case. The librarian calls it her "hobby case." Each week it is loaned out to some pupil who has a collection or display of material which he would like to arrange and exhibit. The use of this case is scheduled for many weeks in advance.

It is time now that we looked into a classroom to see if the friendly, informal atmosphere of the school is translated to class activities. Here is a social studies group working on a municipal government unit. Some of the pupils are at a table over some chars; others are working silently at their desks. There is a conference in one corner with the teacher. Some of the pupils are at the library. Two pupils have been excused to go to the City Hall for information. This unit of work embodies a score of assignments; some are routine; some call for research, some call for abstract ability and creative power. There is such variety in the unit that it meets the interests of each pupil and provides for individual differences in capacity. No formal recitations are held but there are evaluation periods when pupils criticize their own work, and there are reporting periods when committees and individuals tell the group what they have learned. Such a procedure differs radically from a recitation, in that pupils are bringing to the group and perhaps to the teacher new information which is pertinent to their problem.

We come now to an English class. Pupils are silently reading books, which they selected at the library the day before. A few pupils are out of class now exchanging books, which they have not found interesting. When asked what she is trying to accomplish, the teacher relies that she is trying to improve the reading tastes and interests of these boys and girls, that her ideal is to get them interested in reading, of their own volition, the best literature being published for boys and girls of their own age. She feels that that is the best guarantee she can have that they will read the best literature for their own age when they become mature adults. Walking around the class, we find that pupils are reading Newbery Prize Novels such as " Gay Neck, The Trumpeter of Krakow, and Invincible Louisa," as well as Junior Literary Guild books such as "Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, The Flood Fighters," and other miscellaneous types. The teacher’s criterion of her own success is: " Are these boys and girls, through the experiences of this class, improving their literary tastes?"

A second English class is working on a reading unit entitled: "Children of Many Lands." Through the books available in the school and the city library, they have read novels, stories, and nonfiction references on Holland, France, Russia, China, Germany, and other countries. In the pursuit of literary entertainment they are acquiring information about the history, geography, customs, and folkways of the peoples of the earth. While learning about the past, the orientation of their interest is in the present, which as L. Thomas Hopkins has said is the demarcation between experiences, which inhibit and experiences, which stimulate growth in the individual.

In a science class, we find pupils judging samples of soap which have been manufactured in kitchens at home. The winner of the soap-making contest will receive special recognition in assembly. Outside the next science classroom is a bulletin board upon which is posted the day’s weather prediction. In a mathematics class, a broker is explaining the actuarial basis of insurance to an eight-grade group. It is a part of their unit on percentage.

The next room we enter looks more like a living room that a classroom. This is the eight-grade homemaking room. Bit by bit, year by year, through cooked food sales, plays, and special programs, the girls who have taken this course have earned money with which to refinish their room. The color scheme of the walls and ceiling is done in three tomes of yellow; the woodwork is soft green; at the window hang bright glazed chintz curtains in which yellow hues predominate. There is a large artificial fireplace which was made by the boys in the woodshop. Wall bookcases, a settee, a wing chair, a fireside cobbler’s bench, a cricket, two butterfly tables, a large refectory table with benches, and a floor lamp give to this room a homelike atmosphere. All these articles of furniture were planned a paid for by the girls and executed in the woodshop. This group is working out budgets for real and imaginary families in this community as a part of its unit on home management. They have planned family recreation and entertainment. During their unit on childcare, a mother brought her baby to school and bathed it before the girls. They have visited a nearby kindergarten; they have given an afternoon party for small children, each girl inviting a tiny guest and helping with the preparation of gifts, favors, and appropriate games. They have prepared and served a dinner for their fathers, furnishing not only the dinner, but a delightful program.

What about getting a copy of the course to study? The truth is that no formal published courses exist. In each department the teachers are organized with a temporary departmental chairman. In departmental meetings, plans are laid for the year and units of work are planned. Frequently, successful units are repeated from year to year, but no limitation is laid upon the development of a new unit, except the approval of the principal and the teachers of the department.

In grades seven and eight there are no electives. English, social studies, general science, mathematics, art and music, practical arts, and physical education are required. In the second semester and introductory course to foreign language takes the place of social studies. No pupil is asked to elect a ninth-grade subject which he has not had ample opportunity to explore in the seventh or eight grade. Thus does the school attempt to fulfill the exploratory purposes of the junior high school as stated by Thomas H. Briggs.

The special exploratory course in foreign language aims to give pupils an adequate understanding of language origins and of the significance of language in an internationalized world. In the last nine weeks of the course, through the medium of Esperanto, the pupils make a study of the science of language. Esperanto, free from irregularities, is used to illustrate principles of language construction in much the same way as the frictionless car of the glass model suction pump is used as a demonstration unit in physics. In the study of Esperanto, each pupil is required to demonstrate his capacity to succeed in handling foreign language tools. The responsibility rests upon the teacher to indicate to the counselor the pupils who are likely not to succeed in language courses. The pupil must prove that the school will be justified in spending the State’s money upon him in language instruction. The last nine weeks of the eight-grade mathematics are similarly devoted to exploratory and prognostic purposes. Special materials revealing the possibilities in algebra and advanced mathematics have been developed and prognostic purposes. Special materials revealing the possibilities in algebra and advance mathematics have been developed and prognostic devices have been devised with the result that failures in ninth-grade algebra have been almost wholly eliminated.

With the information gathered during these two years of exploratory experience the homeroom teacher and the counselor help the pupil in the upper eighth grade plan his ninth-grade course. No ninth-grade course is finally approved until after the counselor has had at least two personal interviews with the pupil and it has the signature of the parent. After these ninth-grade elections are made, a tentative program for grades ten, eleven, and twelve is made out. Again at the end of the ninth-grade the counselor goes over the pupil’s program with him, checking projected plans against ninth-grade successes. The tenth-grade senior-high-school program is made out and if necessary the eleventh-and twelfth-grade projected programs are revised.

The question often arises, "What provisions are made for individual differences?" And the answer is that provision is made within each unit. As illustrated in the social studies and English units previously referred to, there are in each unit skills and information which all must master, but these materials are small in quantity compared with the large amount of variable material which is devised to cater to a wide variety of interests and capacities.

Three years ago the school followed a program of homogeneous grouping on three ability levels, but so many problems bot of a social and of an educational nature developed that that program has been abandoned in favor of what is now called "comparable grouping." The counselor sections the incoming seventh-grade pupils so that the groups created will be as nearly balanced and as comparable from all angels as possible. Each group will have its leaders and its brilliant students. Each will have its retiring individuals who need to be brought out and its antisocial individuals who will need to be guided. Each will have its pupils of low ability who can only do the routine work, but perhaps furnish some of the social leadership. Pupils who are exceptionally handicapped by lack of intelligence, speech defects, or prolonged illness are assigned either permanently or temporarily to a remedial room, where, under the guidance of a specially-trained teacher, they may progress at their own maximum rate.

As a special counseling device in caring for the needs of poorly adjusted pupils, a guidance clinic has been established under the direction of the counselor. Any pupil who is having a difficult time, scholastically, morally, or socially, may be referred by any member of the staff to the guidance clinic. A clinical study is made of all such pupils by the counselor. Pertinent psychological and educational data, school history, health, family phobias, are entered upon a clinical analysis sheet. Once a week the administrative officers of the school meet for clinical case studies. Remedial measures are planned and the records of all pupils in the clinic are brought up to date.

Marking is fast becoming a function of guidance in the South Pasadena Junior High School. Progress reports from homeroom teachers or the counselor are taking the place of conventional subject achievement marks but limitation of space prohibits and adequate description here of the development of these procedures.

Much has already been made of the work of the art department in beautifying the building. Each year the art classes have an additional activity, creating and presenting a pantomime. One year it was the fairy tale of the "Twelve Dancing Princesses." The year following that they took Rimski-Korsakov’s "Scheherazade Suite," and created dramatic action to accompany it. Last year they wrote a fairy story of their own, which was enacted with masks. This year the boys’ and girls’ glee clubs with violin, flute, harp, and piano accompaniment will sing a choral arrangement of Tschaikowsky’s classic ballet, "The Sleeping Beauty, while on the stage the ninth-grade art class pantomimes the story. It is the practice in these performances for the art class to plan and execute the pantomime, the costumes, and the stage sets. In last year’s performance, and in the current production, the cast includes every member of the art class and no others.

Emphasis is laid upon the creative potentialities in all learning situations. Creative writing activities receive public attention through La Torre, The fortnightly school paper. Each year two special literary and poetry editions are published.

From what has been seen of the school thus far, it should be clear that the extra-curricular activities are largely provided for within the schedule. Some thirty-five hobby clubs, including all pupils, meet during the schoolday on Monday. Weekly assembly programs, as avenues for pupils’ expression father than entertainment, are arranged for each Wednesday. On Friday, the week is concluded with a free activity period for executive committee meetings, conferences, entertainment’s, and other group activities.

Probably the only true extracurricular activities of the school are the homeroom parties which take place after school hours. These social events, whether in the form of a supper at the school, a picnic in a park, a swimming party, a skate at an ice-skating rink, a Saturday hike in the mountains, or a very dignified party at someone’s home, furnish an avenue through which the social integration of the homeroom is perfected. They play no small part in the life of the school. The best results from these parties are achieved when a large percentage of the parents of the group attend and join in the fun.

The program of character education and the plan for social control are inextricably bound up together, and the homeroom is the primary unit through which these controls are developed. As brought out previously, a homeroom group is a normal cross-section of the student population, representing they typical problems of the school. In the seventh and eight grades, pupils in a homeroom travel together from class to class and the homeroom remains intact, with the same sponsor, throughout its three-year cycle in the school. At the two regular weekly meetings of the homeroom, the adjustment of school, group, and individual problems are the primary objectives for consideration. Bulletins from the principal and counselor’s office put many of these problems in a form suitable for group discussion and action.

The school does not sponsor a scholarship or honor society. Every effort is being made to make each activity furnish both its own incentive and its own reward. There is no system of merits or demerits as special incentives or punishments for right or wrong behavior. Right behavior should come from the recognition of the necessity for it rather than the desire to earn favors. Wrong behavior brings its own correction when the recognition of the wrongness of the act is apparent to the doer. The school functions without codes or slogans, preferring a realistic rather than a sentimental approach to the problems of adolescent.

The homework problem has been tentatively met by requiring that all drill and routine tasks be completed at school, reserving work of a recreational or avocational nature for home. The faculty feels that home assignments should become one of the primary avenues through which the school achieves its function of education for a worthy use of leisure time.

The reader will rightly conclude that this is not a conventional junior high school. There is a freedom from compulsion and an emphasis upon pupil initiative in force in this school which no visitor can fail to recognize. Consequently, one would be entitled to ask the question, "How has the community accepted the school?" A candid reply must accept the philosophy underlying this program of education or understand the objectives in view. In any community there are those who look to the past for their standards of value and models of procedure. Nevertheless, the school has a very active and interested body of community opinion in support of its program. In a large measure, this support can be attributed to a parent-teacher organization which has endeavored with every means at its disposal to keep in close touch with the school activities and to understand what was being attempted and why.