Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1909 — New Educational Course for State Estimates Nonessentials In Study. [ARTICLE]

New Educational Course for State Estimates Nonessentials In Study.

The teaching of the fundamentals' of: school su£ecL|,frith less utteifc tttVn to minor matters; the teaching of the principles of hygiene and health and the teaching of the beauty of the **language” and ’’ ’its** correct usage, these are thei three points brought Bbme to 18,000 Indiana teachers in the new 1 course of study for this year just prepared by the Department of Public Instruction. The new course is now in the hands of the state printer and should be ready next week fori distribution throughout the state. Only 19,000 copies will be printed because of the shrinking appropriation for printing. It is the policy of Dr. Aley, superintendent of public instruction, to have less time spent in mere covering jground and more spent in a thorough imastery of subjects studied.

“There are some portions of arithmetic and history, for example, that are necessary every day,” he said. “On the other hand, it isn’t especially necessary to know how to get the greatest common divisor by long division. In the same way as much time is spent by teachers on some little Indian war as the battle of Lexington. We want teachers to emphasize things because of their value and not because they are in the text-book.”

The study of hygiene will play a more prominent part in the school room this year than ever before. It has been the purpose of Dr. Aley to supplement as much as possible the campaign of the state board of health. Children will be taught the value of pure air, of sanitation, of proper food and of cleanliness. The physiology and text-book study will be along a special outline, made out by the author of the adopted text-books, Dr. H. W. Conn, especially for the use of the Indiana code.

A further ambition of the department, of public instruction is to inspire a new patriotism in the school children of the state —and incidentally in the teachers—for the English lanuage not only for its beauty and expressiveness, but also for its correct usage. Teachers will first and foremost be expected to use correct English. They will then be expected to drill their pupils on the words misused most frequently. In the study of literature the strong and well-knit phrases will be pointed out and the students themselves will be encouraged to use good English—not only servicable English, but polished and discriminating English. “In France,” says Dr. Aley, “this sort of work is done in the common school, with the result that every French boy and girl has learned tc love the language in the same way that the flag is loved. The children know well-spoken French, and even the so-called ignorant Frenchman speaks good French. “But the average Hoosier or Buckeye .with a common school education distorts the language with regularity, and seems even to be proud of it. “I don’t expect the results of this campaign for clean and forceful English to bear immediate results. I look for evidences of the teaching of hygiene almost immediately, and for the pressure upon important things alone; but it will be years, of course, before our common school people will speak English well. But if we can, for a starter, call the attention of 9,000 school teachers to the existence of bad English, the result will be felt in the long run. It will be easier now that the majority of our teachers are high school graduates because they know more about literature and English than do the common school graduates. A few years ago It would have been a hard matter, indeed.”

Dr. Aley and his assistant, E. G. Bunnell, will visit sixty-eight counties before Bchool opens, and speak to the teachers at county institutes. These three matters will be gone over carefully, and the attention of the teachers called to what is being done, and the reasons for it.

Rev. W. N. Sherrill, of Mlllertown, Mich., and Rev. J. F. Stadler, of Cloverland, Ind., who have been attending the annual conference of the United Brethren church at Veedershurg, stopped off here over Sunday and held services at Alx. Rev. Sherrell Informs us that Nate Reed, once sheriff of Jasper county, now lives near Mlllertown, where he owns 20 acres of land, has a nice home, keeps batch, hunts and fishes and takes life very easy. Nate was always inclined to do the latter, and now that he has coupled it with fishing on a brook on his own farm, be is doubtless entirely happy.