Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1873 — Hard Sums—Are the Children Taught Rightly? [ARTICLE]

Hard Sums—Are the Children Taught Rightly ?

An exasperated parent overflows into the column of the Phildelphia Bulletin: In common with thousands of other parents who desire that their children shall at least keep up with the average boy and girl, I find myself obliged to spend my evenings in teaching school, doing what I pay others to do during the daytime, and in order that my youngsters may be able to go and recite at school, spending my leisure hours, and the sleepy ones, in trying to fix in their poor, little weary brains the names of almost unknown rivers in some out of the way portion of the globe, or in trying to explain the important and eminently practical fact that 287 1-7 dollars is 2-7 of 9 times what A paid for his horse, and the horse costl-2 of 1-2 of 3-4 as much as his carriage—something, no doubt, that every child ought to know, provided his parents teach it to him. asv

We all know_ thtu we made just such calculations as this fifty times a day, and never think of coming at a result in a sensible, direct manner. Dr. Johnson says a school is “a house of discipline and instruction,” a place of literary education, etc., and that a scholar is “one who leajnaqf a master.” He alsosays » schoolmaster “is one who teachei in a school.” Now, so far as my experience goes, the modern schoolmaster or mistress does none of these things, but merely listens to the recitations of lessons taught by parents at home. I have no hesitation in saying that the whole system of modem teaching, including textbooks, maps, and everything else connected with it, is vastly below and behind what was in vogue thirty years since, and that, instead of making ns a race of well-educated men and women, it is making candidates for the insane asylums, ana piling up a heap of misery m very many forms. lam perfectly willing that teachers shall be well paid, if they only teach, and may mention that in my capacity of trustee of a public school, I give a practical • illustration of my faith; but I am opposed to parents being compelled to teach their children. v As a boy, I was flogged at school, and the memory of the rattan is pleasing as bringing back a time when boys were boys, and teachers were teachers. Now we do not flog the boys, and very properly, for those who deserve the flogging are first the teachers, and perhaps if a parent were made to suffer now and then, it would do him good. Nike P. M. P. B.—My wife says: “Flog the teachers, bv all means,” or at least M of % of 269 873 of 1,939-2,0000 f them. -