Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1910 — Day Spent in Circus Beats School [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Day Spent in Circus Beats School

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.—“No session of the public schools of Springfield after ten o’clock a. m. on circus day." This edict from the office of Prof. Jonathan Fairbanks* life-long educator and for 36 years superintendent of the public schools of Springfield, brought Joy to the hearts of 9,000 school children, for it meant that at ten o'clock on the morning of circus days the city schools closed for the day. “A circus is something every' child ought to see,” Superintendent Fairbanks said, in explaining his orders, “for it is a veritable education in itself. You can see for a small sum attractions that have been grouped together at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and which would oost large sums to see outside a circus. “School cuildren read of lions and

Bee pictures of them, but they don’t really know what a lion is until they see one. Merely seeing the animals in the open cages of a circus parade is of great value to children. They see many animals with which they are not familiar and get a real knowledge of animals of which they have read but which they have little opportunity to Bee. In the menagerie there are animals from all parts ol the world and the child who goes to the circus learns more about animals in one day than he can learn from the teacher of a nature study class in a year. “Then schoolroom work is done in the most perfunctory way when there is a circus in town. The minds of the children—not nearly all of the children are there—are not upon the work, and the teacher can put no life in his or her tasks. The teacher knows all the work will have to be gone over the following day.” Professor Fairbanks is almost eighty years old, and he has been elected superintendent of the public schools here almost without opposition 36 times.