Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1919 — MAKES POINT ON EDUCATION [ARTICLE]

MAKES POINT ON EDUCATION

Writer Seems to Think That All la Not Right With Present System Employed. Here is a healthy boy of twelve. What we most want of him is that he shall develop himself in character and ability to the utmost extent of which he is capable. If there is a precious little splirk of originality or germ of -leadership—anywhere about —him, we most want him to discover that and develop it, for there is never enough leadership and originality in the world. We are always wanting inventors arid leaders in industry, in politics, in science, in art. So we take this boy at half past eight in the morning and stick him in a hard seat, right behind a hard desk, and tell him he must not budge if he values his hide. He must not even shuffle his feet or look abopt; he must not whisper to the boy next him. We give him certain carefully prescribed books, none of which interests him very much, and tell him it makes no difference if one of them happens to interest him more than another; he must give exactly the same attention to all of them for rigidly prescribed periods. He is “good” in proportion as he takes the books, Just as some weU-reg-ulated machine takes whatever is fed into it. He is “good” in proportion as he submits to a cast-iron, mechanical regimen, and represses all impulses that are not in strict conformity with unvarying rules; —which, for a healthy, boy, means repressing practically all natural Impulses. The school is a ponderous, close-webbed machine for compelling absolute uniformity. In the matter of rigidity the Prussian military regimen is by coipparison quite lax and roomy. * - ‘ - Is that the best way to trent thnt boy, when what we want of him most of all is that he shall develop initiative and leadership?—Saturday Evening Post.