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UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION

To the Superintendent:

WASHINGTON, D. C.

September 29, 1917.

A recent investigation shows that in one great American city there are thousands of children in that city so undernourished that they can never be normal. Terrible as this situation is it does not approximate that in Europe. Moreover there is serious danger of its becoming worse.

Our Nation and our Allies are confronted with a food situation of such grave menace that its solution requires the coöperation of every American home. The needs of our Allies and of the soldiers we send across the sea cannot be met unless there are tremendous increases in our exports-wheat, meat, sugar and similar products. Increased demands present a problem that cannot be met unless in our homes such substitutions in the customary diet are made as will conserve our wheat and meat supply.

In order to bring to the people of the country a realization of the gravity of the situation, a pledge card campaign, national in its scope, will be made during the week of October 21st to 28th. During that period an effort will be made to pledge as many as possible of the 23,000,000 families to coöperate with the United States Food Administration in a policy calculated to increase our wheat and meat reserves by means of a larger use of corn, vegetables and other products. The success of the propaganda depends upon the force of the educational drive made.

We shall send you in a few days a pamphlet for teachers, which asks them to teach the children about food conservation and about the campaign. Will you, in the interests of our national safety and that of our Allies, ask all of your teachers to help in every way to make this work of the children effective in advertising the campaign to their parents? Will you have the pamphlets which we are sending distributed, one to each teacher under your jurisdiction? The help of the children means much to the children of other countries.

We are asking this because the seriousness of the situation demands a combined effort to secure the coöperation of all in the intelligent use of our food supply. Your help in this will not only be of great value in the success of this campaign, but it will be a service to our country.

Very truly yours,

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION,
FAMILY ENROLLMENT CAMPAIGN,
By H. J. HILL, Director.

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION

FOOD CONSERVATION BUREAU

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Educational Press-For Immediate Release

In planning its campaign the Food Conservation Bureau of the United States Food Administration has realized the importance of the public school as a medium for the dissemination of the ideas which are "to modify the food habits of the one hundred million of our people. It has therefore sought the coöperation of state universities and colleges in order to have the food conservation program reach as large a number of students as possible. A ten lesson course in conservation was prepared by a committee of domestic science experts, among whom the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Education and the United States Food Administration were

represented. Every state, except one where there was no summer school, was organized, and coöperation was universally cordial. Six hundred and thirty-three schools received copies of the course, and several hundred thousand students were reached.

In addition to giving the ten lesson course to summer schools, teachers' institutes were asked to aid in the work. Letters were written to state superintendents, to presidents of State Universities and Agricultural Colleges, and county commissioners, and to each of these a food conservation syllabus was sent. Replies to date have shown enthusiastic coöperation. During the first week there were requests for 28,000 copies of the lessons for institutes held during August, and requests since then have more than doubled that number.

Of the first edition of these lessons, Numbers I-V, there have been distributed 12,000 copies; of Numbers VI-X, 10,000 copies. With these have been distributed 145,000 broadsides on food conservation. A new edition of 400,000 copies of Lessons I-X, inclusive, in one pamphlet, is in press, and orders have already been received for more than half the edition.

With a realization of the enduring need of a conservation program on a broad and fundamental basis the United States Food Administration is planning with the coöperation of the Bureau of Education to place in the schools a course of study which shall be incorporated not as an emergency measure, but as a permanent problem and integral part of our freshened educational aims.

The Bureau of Education will therefore publish, on the first of October and each month thereafter up to June, a bulletin of family and civic economics. The material will be in the form of reading and study courses for elementary and high school grades, and will cover all the topics that enter into community life. These lessons are intended to stimulate closer cooperation between the school and the community in general in solving the problems of our democracy.

Professor Charles H. Judd, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Chicago, has charge of the preparation of these lessons. Under his supervision, a staff of experienced teachers and educational editors will collect and arrange the necessary material.

Lessons on food conservation may properly be introduced as part of the work in reading classes and as subject matter for discussion in English. It would make an excellent center of correlation for classes of high grade older children.

Lessons in Community and National Life will be issued in the form of circulars of the Bureau of Education.

"The first circular will deal with types of social organization. About one-fourth of each of the sections of this circular will utilize the experience of the war to show how interdependent are the members of a modern social group. These 'war lessons' will take up in the concrete such topics as the following: What the war has used up; What the war prevents men from producing; New needs which grow out of the war and are met by invention. "The section of the circular prepared for use in the upper classes of the high school will then present in a series of concrete descriptions the contrast between the life of a frontiersman and the life of a modern city.

"The section for the seventh and eighth grades and the first year of the high school will describe the life of a colonial family as an example of a fairly

independent economic unit. Following this will be a description of a modern factory and the community about it, and a description of a town produce market.

"The section for the lower grades will deal with the things which society makes and uses. The specific topics in the first circular will be the making of cloth in a colonial family, the water system of a town, and the collection, refinement, and use of mineral oils.

"The second circular will deal with production and conservation. The series as a whole will deal with the economic, sociological, and civic aspects of modern life.

"An edition of 12,500 copies of the first circular will be published for distribution by the Bureau of Education. Subsequent circulars will be published in editions of 3,000 copies.

"The Superintendent of Public Documents is prepared to supply reprints of each of the sections of thirty-two pages, when these are ordered in bulk. The sale price of these reprints is to be found on the order card. Small schools are asked to consolidate their orders through the county superintendent or through the State department of education. Orders can be made on the enclosed card. Money orders should accompany the order. "It is recommended that teachers secure for their own use each month the three sections. Those in the lower grades will find material in the sections designed for the upper grades which will give them the principles that they should incorporate into their teaching. In like manner, the teachers in the upper grades will find illustrative material in the section prepared for the lower grades.

"The arrangements provided make it possible to supply during the year to each pupil 256 pages of reading material at an aggregate cost of 8 cents, and to supply to a teacher 768 pages of material for 24 cents."

The three sections published each month will be known as Sections A, B, and C. Section A has been prepared for the upper three classes of the high school; Section B for the seventh and eighth grades and first year high school; and Section C for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. The prices at which these sections will be supplied to schools are as follows:

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All orders must be accompanied by money order or certified check MADE PAYABLE TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS and sent to the Section of Elementary and Secondary Education, U. S. Food Administration, Washington, D. C. Forward to..

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DEPARTMENT STORE AS A CENTRE OF INTEREST

MARGARET C. HORRIGAN

TEACHER OF UNGRADED CLASS. P. S. 59, MANHATTAN

Believing with Professor Dewey that "it is well to draw the child's work from the community in which he lives" we decided last term to find out more about something with which the children were already familiar.

There is a very large department store in our neighborhood which offered just the opportunity we were seeking. It has grown from a small shop and is constantly expanding. The children know a great deal about it. They are very much interested in its window display. They shop alone and with their mothers there. Some of them have older sisters and brothers employed in it. They see every possible school subject concretely utilized in its many activities so of necessity we found the problems connected with it vital and interesting.

Oral English, both to assist the children to communicate their ideas through words accurately and effectively and as a preparation for written work was based on topics such as:

1. Location of store.

2. Beginning.

3. Growth.

4. Present size.

5. Necessity for organization and system.

6. Various departments including banking, post-office and telephone exchange.

7. Location of departments.

8. Reason for-if any.

9. The care of the immense building.

10. The fire laws.

11. How goods are bought-wholesale.

12. How goods are sold-retail.

13. How goods are stored-stockroom.

14. How to audit bills.

15. Exchanges-how arranged.

16. Credits-how arranged.

The many lessons that we were able to group around the three departments mentioned may readily be seen:

1. Banking.

2. Interest.

3. Thrift.

4. Postage.

5. Parcel post.

The various conversations that were carried on over the telephone gave splendid opportunity to the imagination.

We wrote letters applying for positions, ordering goods, registering complaints. We played games in which some of the children were the clerks, some the shoppers. We learned the value of self-control. The necessity of clerks being clean, polite and obedient if advancement in their work was their goal. The shoppers learned to be considerate, to use discretion in buying and to prepare shopping lists.

For the geography we studied the store's delivery system in Greater New York. One of the girls in the class had a brother employed as a driver and she found out for us about the various routes. We followed them on the map learning all the ferries and bridges. Incidentally we found how to get to the store from all points of the city.

The number work offered another rich field. We studied, using numbers easily manipulated by the children, buying merchandise wholesale and selling it retail. Profit and loss problems followed naturally.

We gathered the advertising data the store had printed in the various newspapers, compared it with advertisements of other stores and expended amounts of money accordingly. Sales in the various departments were always enjoyed. We learned to make out bills and receipt them. The girls in the older group worked on problems supplying the store restaurant using the cooking recipes given them in the Domestic Science period as the standard of measurement. Even the little children found work to interest them. They enjoyed playing store, buying articles such as stamps, spools of thread and ribbons. They made change from a dime and a quarter, and deposited small amounts in the bank. They found the cost of carfare to and from the store.

Working along the industrial line we priced in the shop articles such as cooking outfits, simple dresses, underclothing, embroidered towels, and many other things. We found whether we could make them cheaper in school than the shop could sell them. With our woodwork problems we used the same method. We found our window boxes were cheaper and better than those supplied by the store even allowing for the cost of wood and paint. For Nature Study we visited the greenhouses and found much to interest us and many things to learn.

In making our spelling list of course we had plenty of material. The words necessary for the written English were those of every day use. The words were those which the children were constantly reading and constantly writing so without any undue effort we had attentive repetition enough to make the spelling automatic.

This article has but outlined the work we did. When the term drew to an end we found that because the children were so interested our work was both profitable and enjoyable.

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