Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1883 — The Public Schools and the Public Desire. [ARTICLE]

The Public Schools and the Public Desire.

Nine-tenths of the children who attend the public schools are sent there solely for the purpose of getting simple elementary instruction. They go to the primary schools to learn their A B CS, to be taught to read and to write. They are put in the grammar schools to be grounded in arithmetic and geography and history. That is all the instruction that they have time for, all that can be properly given them in the time they can spend at school, and all they really have immediate need for. The general demand, the vox populi, is for that sort of instruction, and no other. If the attention of the average run of pupils is diverted from these simple, elementary and essential branches of study to others which are more ornamental or valuable only as a foundation for courses to be '.pursued subsequently, their time is so far wasted, and they are defrauded of their right. —New York Sun.