The Ben Blewett Junior High School of St. Louis: Part I

Abstract

The Ben Blewett Jun or High School of St. Louis is a school of 1,350 pupils and a teaching staff of 15 men and 41 women, situated in one of the residential districts of the city. The pupils come mainly from well-to-do families, only 15 per cent of them of foreignborn parents, and a large majority of them planning to enter the Senior High School situated in an adjoining block. This fact must be borne in mind in considering the organization, the curriculum, and the methods of instruction provided by Blewett. Obviously a junior high school in a residential district of such an order faces problems very different from those which will confront some of the other seven junior high schools now projected for St. Louis. The school is housed in a three-story building, the basement of which is given over to manual-training shops, domestic-science workrooms, including a model middle-class city apartment, a girls' gymnasium, and a large lunchroom. The first floor has offices, classrooms, laboratories, study hall, dressmaking and art rooms; the second, classrooms, commercial rooms, laboratories, and library; the third, classrooms, laboratories, music rooms, boys' gymnasium, and an auditorium seating 800. A spacious playground, laid out with athletic fields of various sorts, covers a city block. The entire plant, modern throughout, provides ample accommodations for the varied activities of a school whose keynote is education for democracy through democratizing school life. And even the excellent Blewett plant is inferior in many respects to the general average of St. Louis school plants; the city boasts of having one of the best-housed school systems in the country.