Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1911 — Would Build School for Out-Door Training [ARTICLE]

Would Build School for Out-Door Training

By FRANK CRANE

If I had a billion dollars I would establish the University of Outdoors. There would be no buildings to speak of; it is not for them I would need the money, but to hammer my idea into the heads of my countrymen. Somewhere on one of the great lakes I would set up my school, consisting of twenty miles of water front, plenty of virgin forest, and many little lakes, hills, rocks, streams, meadows and sandbanks. The health and training of the body would not be an elective hour or two a week

in a stuffy gymnasium, after the manner of our extant hothouses, kiln drying educational infirmaries, but the first and unremitting effort would be to perfect the house of the mind. Whether my children should fill their noggins or not, their nerves, blood and sinew should be stuffed full of fresh air, they should be graduated as splendid, supple animals, as healthy and physically joyous as dogs or deer. The school term should begin with the spring and end with autumn. Every minute, day and night, the pupils should be outdoors, using tents for sleeping in bad weather. They should learn how to be cold and hot, wet and dry, without taking sick. Girls as well as boys should learn to swim, to sail a boat, to ride and to run and to throw (for which their grandchildren would build me a monument). Boys should "also learn to dance, to sing, to sew and to cook. There would be no clothing question, certain uniforms being prescribed for all. No human being, before the age of twenty-one, should waste one thought upon clothes.