The San Francisco Schools Bridge Medal

SCHOOL MEDALS MUST SOON GO No More Souvenirs for Bright Girls and Boys A SOURCE OF JEALOUSY The Bridge and Denman Prizes Will Not Be Used Next Term PRINCIPALS' PERTINENT VIEWS A Luxury for Few - An Injury to Many - The Pupil at the Foot of the Class

It has been virtually determined by the educational Solons that the medals, which for so many years past have been awarded to the public school children upon their graduation from the grammar grades in recognition of excellence in scholarship and deportment, are more harmful than beneficial. At the end of the term these glittering souvenirs that, with their blue ribbon attachments, have been worn so proudly by so many bright and well behaved boys and girls will be in use no longer.

They are doomed and will soon be only a recollection of past days. Pride is not the sole feeling associated with these medals, for their distribution as experience shows has been provocative also of many heartaches and jealousies. Conformably to instructions from the Board of Education, Superintendent Babcock recently sent a circular letter to primary, grammar and high school principals, inquiring: "In your judgment is the presentation of medals advantageous?"

The answers received thus far from a score of principals, including several of the representative schools, are emphatically in the negative.

"I am firmly of the opinion," says William H. Edwards of the Crocker Grammar "that the distribution of medals for scholarship and deportment is an unalloyed evil, and for one I wish the Board of Education would find some means of abolishing the nuisance. Those who win the medals are those from whom no effort is necessary. Often the most deserving do not get them. Often they are the cause of jealousy and bard feeling. Often the recipients obtain them by cheating and sharp practice."

"Often those who do get them place no value upon them. I do not", writes James T. Hamilton of the Lincoln Grammar, "regard medals as a proper incentive to study. Few pupils work for them after the first two or three months. The rest of the class drops out of the race. Those that do work for medals are the bright pupils, who need no such stimulus."

"No matter how fairly awarded, there are always some pupils, and often a few parents, dissatisfied." Miss Clara M. Johnston of the Fairmount Primary thus tersely and strongly expresses her views: "If medals are to be distributed, the number should be increased, giving the pupils who have made great improvement an equal chance with those who are naturally bright or whose home surroundings are such that they have every advantage. In my own neighborhood some of the brightest children come from homes where parents are unable to read or write, where no daily paper is taken and where there are few if any books in the house. Such pupils deserve medals before those ranking hither."

The system of medal distribution finds an out-and-out advocate in W. W. Stone of the South San Francisco Primary, who says: "I believe in the medal system. Like all other stimulants, medals should be given on the prescription of competent mental doctors. If there are men or women or children whose powers of mind or body do not glow best under the motive energy of healthful emulation I have never met them. Medals properly mixed and purely administered stir the sluggish blood and impart activity to the halting brain."

Miss Agnes M. Manning of the Webster Primary and Mrs. Tiarah J. Mann of the Hawthorne Primary also think that the medals should be retained and distributed impartially. Superintendent Babcock says that medals ratify the pride of a few at the expense of the many, and should accordingly be discontinued. The pupil at the foot of his class is, he holds, entitled to the utmost respect if he be in earnest in his desire to learn and will, in the long run, be likely to come out a winner.