Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1917 — CRITIC OF MODERN IDEAS [ARTICLE]

CRITIC OF MODERN IDEAS

Writer Ranges Himself Firmly Against System of Education Which He Considers Pernicious.

In no other way, perhaps, than in their advocacy of the pernicious doctrine of individual Interest have the modernists more, seriously undermined souiftl scholarship, proper habits of study, and the development of virile, rugged character. Of all the latest educational nostrums foisted upon us, this is one of the worst. Even a child can feel its appeal; for the pill is thickly coated with sugar, and every child’s “interest” draws it to sugar, even though a stomach ache or something worse may result. Where, pray, are we to begin and where end in this weighty responsibility of heeding and catering to the interests of youth? AVas there ever a normal boy who did not successively show an “interest” in running a candy store, in becoming a policeman, or a motorman, or an engineer, or the captain of an ocean liner? Can we conceive of a red-blood-ed youth to whom electricity and machinery and chemical experiments do not bring their special Would we regard a boy as having ordinary intelligence who could not readily learn to understand the mechanism of his father’s automobile? As a schoolmaster I am only too well aware that fathers with such normal sons see unmistakable signs of budding genius in this natural ability of youth; but as an ordinary individual I am disposed to class these deluded parents with those whose sons have “never told a lie.” They lack perception. —Alfred E. Stearns in the Atlantic.