Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 90, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1918 — EDUCATIONAL DRIVE WEEK. [ARTICLE]

EDUCATIONAL DRIVE WEEK.

In compliance with the numerous demands of these strenuous times, those of our citizens particularly interested in the educational affairs of our state have planned an educational drive beginning April 22 and including April 27. I Governor Goodrich, the state superintendent of public instruction with the presidents of our leading colleges and universities, constitute a committee whose purpose it is to readjust our educational system to the present changed conditions. I In compliance with a request from this committee Rev. J. Budman Fleming of the Presbyterian church, gave a most practical and comprehensive sermon Sunday evening to an audience many of whom were teachers or school officials, his subject being “The Educational Drive,” in which he explained very practically the admonition of that wisest of churchmen and statesmen of old, King Solomon: “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Emphasizing the word should lead to inference that individual instruction is a necessity if each individual would fit into niche for which nature had intended him. Our past educational methods have failed to take this fact into account and we have fed

our children from a common educational trough, as we have our livestock, as a result we have a great army of inefficient who fill places for which they are entirely unfitted and unprepared and who constitute he great army of the unsuccessful: hence the demand for an educational programme which will survey the ndustrial field and plan to fit the man to the job for which he shows a natural tendency. Under this plan it would be expedient that denominational and private, schools be required to meet the same requirements that is demanded of other institutions whose object it is to train he young for efficient citizenship. While the biggest job on our hands at the present time is “licking the i Kaiser,” and we must devote most of our energies to that important accomplishment yet we must plan.for the reconstruction period that will follow: when the demands of the times will require the highest type of statesmanship that any age has ever been called upon to furnish. The time when war industries will have ended and the great American army will return to civil life. We have been a wastful and extravagant people: as an illustration of many that might be given, . the. speaker mentioned .the waste that occurs in a great yellow pine manufacturing plant in Georgia, »• where two thirds of the raw material is burned because it is unfitted for the special products manufactured by this mill: if economy was a national aim other mills could be located near this one and from the waste products such materials as wood alcohol, paper, fiber, silk for hosiery, men’s ties, dress trimmings and many other commercial products could be produced. The purpose of this “educational drive,” then is to call attention to the needs of the times, and to see to it that every boy and girl is properly educated to fill an important nlace and be an efficient factor in rhe new economic age which will follow this great world war.