Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1919 — WOULD ABOLISH THE MERIT SYSTEM. [ARTICLE]

WOULD ABOLISH THE MERIT SYSTEM.

New York, Oct. il.—Abolition of examinations and merit marks as means of inducing children to study ■was urged at the international conference of woman physicians today by Miss Grace Fulmer, formerly assistant superintendent of schools in Los Angeles. Education should appeal to the child as a form of play, she said. During a discussion in which several speakers termed the whole educational system of the United States as faulty because the child is regarded as a miniature adult, Dr. Wilfrid Lay, of New York, said the same methods of instruction were in vogue now as two centuries ago. “The child is just as different from the adult as the caterpillar from the moth,” she said, “and it to' no wonder that those who are trying to train children as if they Were adults are so poorly paid. 'Tailure to grasp the mental situation of the child has placed our schools in the position of attempting to feed children fried books or baked knowledge in the same way they are given fried potatoes. It to a system of cramming rather than of the actual needs of the child.”