Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1879 — Teachers and Task-Masters. [ARTICLE]

Teachers and Task-Masters.

J. G. Holland, In Scribner for December. The public have not held teachers to their true responsibility. We sends young lad or a'young girl to school,and find that, while we are paying out a great deal of money for them, they are gaining nothing. We complain, and are informed that our children are not industrious, that they do not seem in* terested in their studies, that they are absorbed in play, etc., etc. In ninetynine cases in a hundred, our disappointment is entirely the fault of the teacher. He or she is simply incompetent for the duty they have undertaken. A first-class teacher always good pupils. Lack of interest in study l* always the result of poor teaching. We send a boy to college, and find that he regards his studies as a grind,—that he is only interested in getting good marks, and that he is getting no scholarly tastes. and winning no scholarly delights. We inquire, and find him in the nands of a young tutor, without experience, who really pretends to he no more than a task-master, and who knows nothing, and seems to care nothing, about the office of teaching. The placing of large masses of young men in the hands of inexperienced persons, who do not pretend to do more than to set tasks and record the man-

ner in which they are performed, without guidance or assistance, is a gross imposition of the college upon a trusting publio, aim it Is high time that an outcry so determined and persistent is raised against it that it shall procure a reform. ’ ‘ • 4 - Babb Hawkins, a notorious desperado, recently made his escape from the Tlptoa county jail by throwing pepper in the eyes of the jailer, thus rendering him helpless to offer any eppetftiem te Hawkins’ escape.