Page 50 - 1913 November - To Dragma

TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 55

The persons attending these lectures are a cosmopolitan multitude.
I n fact, so many of the Yiddish, Italians and Germans are inter-
ested that some cities have provided special lectures for them, given
in their own tongues.

The utilization of the public school for meetings of various or-
ganizations is proving beneficial to the community. Not only is
the cooperation of the parents with the teachers secured by the
mothers' clubs, but the parents themselves are often benefited. The
Chapman School Parents' League in Boston offers a prize of five
dollars for the best kept home flower garden, the best kept vege-
table garden, the best kept window boxes, and the best kept home
premises,7 thus encouraging the beautifying of the home.

The use of the buildings for political meetings stimulates the
participation in political activities by the masses, and gives
them important facts about our government. There is no force
in society so capable of killing graft government as the training of
the masses to realize their importance and proper sphere in our ad-
ministration, and the instilling into them of upright, honest political
ideals.

One of the most interesting of the extended uses of the school
plant is that for evening recreation and social centers. In the
dirty, overcrowded tenement districts, with their ugly, sordid aspects
and disagreeable odors, where could the inmates find opportunity for
relaxation and room for recreation on a winter's evening? The re-
creation centers supply the need. Here there is provision for old
and young, students and those not in school. The New York cen-
ters have ball games, shuffle-board, ring toss, quoits, ping-pong, gym-
nasium work, wand drills, folk dancing, and one center has a class
for deaf mutes. The centers are also equipped with a "quiet games
room," an evening study room, and bathing facilities. The evening
study rooms are meeting a long-felt need. Poor students are often
the outcome of environment. Where in their noisy, cold, uncom-
fortable home quarters could they find opportunity for study? The
room is under the supervision of a kind, sympathetic teacher, who
shows the students how to study, directing them how to rely on
themselves rather than upon her in the case of some difficulty aris-
ing. These classes have resulted in better pupils for the day schools.
There are many literary societies which read books, study economics
and Shakespeare, and carry on debates worthy of maturer minds.
Civic clubs which discuss present-day problems are many in number

7Perry, p. 242.