Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1881 — “Going to School.” [ARTICLE]

“Going to School.”

Detroit Free Press. Class in geography, stand up. Now, who can tell me who was King of-the Cannibal Islands 400 years ago? What can no one answer this gravely improtant query? Is it possible that you have knowingly kept yourselves in the dark on a point which may one day decied ths fate of the nation? Very well; the whole school may stay for an hour after school as & punishment. The “B” class In geography will please arise and come forward for trial and sentence, Ndw, then, in what direction from San Francisco are the Mangrove Islands? What! can no one Upswer? And you boys expect to grow up and become business men, and you girls to become wives and yet don’t know whether the Mangrove Islands are north, east or south-west of Sau Francisco! I shall send these boys up to the principle to be thrashed,ami the girls will have no recess. The class in history will now take the prisoners’ box, and tell the jury whether sunflower seeds are among the exports of Afghanistan.No answer? None of you posted on this momentous question? Two-thirds of you on the Kin tof leavingsehool to mingle in the sy scenes of life, and yet you do not know whether Afghanistan exports sunflower seeds or grindstones! For five years I have labored here as a teacher, and now I find that my woik js tbrown away. Go to your seats and I will think np some mode of punishment befitting your crime. The advanced class in mathematics will now step forward. One of you f ilease step to the blackboard and illusrate the angular rectangle northeast corner of-a quadrangle. What! No auo iu all this class able to make that simple illustration? James and John and Joseph and Henry, you expect to become merchants.and Mary and Kate and Nancy and Sarah, you axe all old enough to get married, and yet you confess your ignorance of angular rectangular quadrangulers before the whole school? John, suppose you become a wholesale grocer. Do you expect to buy tea and sugar and coffee and spices, and sell the B»me again without reference to quadrangles? Mary, suppose you go to tbe store to buy four yards of iactory at ten cents a yard. How are you going to be certain that you have not been cheated if you cannot figure the right angle of a triangle? An, me! I might as well resign my position and and die, for the next generation will be so ignorant that all educated persons will feel themselves strangers and outcasts.”