Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1883 — Faults of Our School System. [ARTICLE]

Faults of Our School System.

We school the children too much. That is to say, we keep them at school all the year round; we continually force their perceptive and memorizing faculties, and give no time for the. play of their reflective faculties. In other words, they don’t reflect upon what they have learned or attempt to apply it in their own minds. We cram them with too many studies. How else is the fact to be accounted for that a child in the country, having but four months’ schooling in the year, will come to Boston snore matured in his education than one who has had nine months’ schooling in the year? In our city schools there is too much teaching and too little learning. By that I mean to say that the great press of studies place upon the young mind by oral teaching for a few minutes at a time, anti's different study most every hour in the day, tend to break up the continuity of the pupil’s thought, and the oral addresses and lectures receive but little attention from the tired minds of the pupils.— B, F. Butler.