Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1909 — When Will Schools Wake Up? Is Asked by Able Writer. [ARTICLE]

When Will Schools Wake Up? Is Asked by Able Writer.

The following article was clipped from a paper and handed to us for publication. It very ably presents the neglected opportunities in the education, of our children: Our schools generally still come a long, long way from meeting the needs of the times; efficient as they are, they hay,e not kept up with the pace of modern progress; they are still actuated by the old medieval idea that literary education is the whole thing; they have not yet become fully aroused to the fact that only one person out of a hundred, say, needs a literary education; while all the rest need training in some practical art or Industry. For example, the Washington schools are counted among the most advanced in the country, yet we know | of a 7th grade teacher who this week assigned as a task for her boys and girls the writing of a fairy story, from their own imagination, on “A Ball Given by the Lily.” Now, imagine a normal, active, manly boy in the 7th grade getting down to writing a story on such a subject as this. He simply can’t do it; it isn’t in him; if he were a “girl-boy” he might do something' at it; but as we don’t want to rear girl-boys in this country, therefore the system which provides such effeminate pabulum for girls and boys alike is all wrong. Our schools require a heroic pruning, not only of the little twigs in the shape of fads, but of whole limbs—so that-a new growth, better adapted to bring forth fruits, can be allowed to develop. Practical training, made to fit the actual boy and the actual girl, must be the object and purpose of the new education; the ancient superstition that education consists in drumming literary refinements into ordinary workday heads must be utterly cast off, and a new gospel must be takeil* up. Everyone knows that all the walks in life which call for these literary attainments are hopelessly overcrowded, while there is an insistent and perpetual demand for men and women of practical abilities, to carry on the productive work of the world. In heaven’s name let us give our children educations that will equip them for the real work of life. Let us force our schools to turn out more farmers, dairymen, foresters, poultrymen, stock-raisers, and artisans of every sort; these are what the world demands. There will always be plenty- and to spare of professional men, real estate agents, clerks, writers, and such-like.

Why, I met a young fellow the other day who is getting $6 a day laying brick on the new national museum building in Washington, while the scientists who will work in the building—for all their college educations —have to work for a third less. We don’t all need to be bricklayers, but the case illustrates the condition. There is always a shortage ,of good practical men and women, and always an overproduction of the other kind, and our schools are recreant to their trust in refusing to recognize this fact and meet it. We know this is rank heresy, so considered by educators, but a generation from now it will not be heresy. The old idea, that there is something aristocratic about a literary education is being knocked ruthlessly in the head; work, practical work, is being exaulted. It is the people of practical attainments who today are independent and who can dictate terms to, shall we say, their betters? Time was when the man with a little book learning had an immense advantage, but that day is past. The thing now is to adjust ourselves to the new situation. To the scrap-heap with the old education; it’s worn out, obsolete, way behind the times. ’ - -