The Poor Children!
The movement for all-the-year-round schools is gaining ground. According to this plan there will be four school terms, of twelve weeks each, with two weeks of August vacation, one week at Christmas, and one about Easter. Children will be promoted quarterly instead of semi-annually.
The gain from the new plan is, for the children, that they will finish the elementary school course in six years instead of eight. The law compels them to remain in school till the age of fourteen, and the all-the-year-round school will enable nearly all children to complete by that time the grammar-school course, and even, in the case of the brightest children, begin the high-school course.
The gains for the community will be these. The children will go forth into life better trained. The expensive school plant will not be idle one-fourth of the time. The children will leave school earlier, and their education will cost much less. The gains for the teachers will be continual employment, and of course more pay. Even with the proposed change they will have a longer vacation than most business men.
But how about the poor children? When are they to play? When are they to grow strong? When are they to get in a little childhood?
To be sure, parents are allowed to choose whether they will send their children to school for three terms or four; but if the system is once thoroughly adopted, courses of study and class make-up conforming to it, it is all but certain that close conformity to it will be necessary on the part of all that use the public schools.
I believe that a child can learn more in three terms a year than in four; and even if this were not the case, I believe that the three-term knowledge will stick and the four-term knowledge largely vanish. A child has a right to its play as well as its work. Forced plants lack stability.
The experiment will, I am very sure, prove the folly of the plan, and perhaps it is well enough that the experiment should be made; but I am glad that my own girl is not one of the children experimented upon.
Forcibly Fed Minds.
"There are no forcibly fed minds," once said Professor Ernest C. Moore, of Harvard. That is, all the nutriment a mind really takes in is what it goes out for.
If that is true, most of our schools are on the wrong tack, and most of our teachers and parents need to change their policy toward the children.
Of course it is possible for a strong-willed teacher, by sheer force of incessant repetition backed by a domineering personality, to hammer a few facts into a boy's mind and clinch them there. But that isn't feeding the mind. The facts do not form an organic part of the mind. They are driven into it like nails, and remain there disassociated.
There is only one road to feeding, and that is appetite. There is only one way to teach, and that is to arouse a hunger for knowledge. When that is accomplished, the pupil begins to teach himself.
Newspapers, Time-Wasters.
I was much impressed one day by a very simple sight. A hack stood at our suburban railway station, waiting for a chance passenger. In the hack sat the driver, a young man of some ability. And he was reading the daily paper. That was all.
That was all, but it set me to thinking seriously. For only the night before I had had a long talk with that young man. He had told me how little pay he got, and what a dreary life he led. Some days he would sit on his hack from six in the morning till midnight, and have not a single fare. Absolutely nothing to break up the monotony of his existence. Nothing, I say, except the daily paper.
What an opportunity that young man had! Hugh Miller, Horace Mann, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, with far less opportunity for reading and study, became world leaders of thought and action. In the time that young man had at his absolute disposal, he could read a library a year. He could master a new language every twelvemonth. He could become an authority on the history of his native land. He could study every science. He could grow learned in mathematics. He could surround himself for life with the great figures of the world, its Shakespeare’s, its Milton, its Bacons, its Macaulays, its Ruskin. If that young man had a little pocket in his coat, and that little pocket had always some little book, it would not be many years before he would graduate from the hack and be riding in a carriage of his own to the Supreme Court, perhaps, or the halls of Congress, or the State University.
But instead of all this—the daily paper! One big fire and three little ones. Five social scandals and six political disgraces. A hanging, a divorce suit, a jail broken, four embezzlements. This man's chances for the office of mayor, that man's chances for the post of sheriff. A miscellany of jokes and short paragraphs and stories and scraps of information that remain in one's head about as long as one reads them. It is for this that the young man has bartered Scott, and Tennyson, and Carlyle, and Motley, and Hawthorne, and Bunyan, and Parkman, and Burroughs, —the riches of science, literature, and art—for this gossip, and sensationalism, and inanity!
Of course I would have him—and you—read the newspapers. But fifteen minutes is long enough time to spend upon the average newspaper. And if some unusually good thing causes you to make it twenty minutes, then get through in ten next time. You can do it in this time, and less, if you stop to ask yourself as you note the successive titles, "Is this worthwhile?" "Is this going to give me anything that will make me more of a man, and fit me better for life's duties?" And if the answer is "No," resolutely pass it by unread, however interesting it may appear. On some days you can read an entire newspaper thus—by title, as they read acts that come before Congress.
And if you have enough good sense and sturdy resolution to do this, you will have sense enough and determination enough to use in the best way the enormous amount of time you will save. I am not afraid of that.
Education, a.D. 1975.
The School Board in session, passing on candidates for posts of teachers.
Secretary: I have here, Mr. President, the recommendations of Miss Flossie Plume, who desires to be teacher of dress-trimming. Also those of Mr. Harvey Hammer, teacher of auto-repairing. Also of Mr. Angelo Brush, professor of sign-painting. Also of Mrs. Bridget Maloney, instructor in pie-crust. Also of Mr. Ralph Rake, teacher of lawn-cutting These all come to us with fine letters from the heads of normal schools where they have graduated in their respective branches of study.
President: Good! These are important posts, and the candidates will be considered seriatim. The secretary will read their recommendations.
Secretary (hesitating): There is still one more candidate, Mr. President—Philip Figures, who wants to teach arithmetic.
President (with a laugh): He should know that we abolished that subject ten years ago. Write him that he is far behind the times. And now, Mr. Secretary, who is first on your list?
The Competing Can-Openers.
Once upon a time there was a competition in can-opening.
Along came the scissors can-opener. It opened and shut, and opened and shut, and slashed its way around the top of the can, leaving a jagged rim behind it. And the thumb of the operator was lame for a week.
Then came the knife can-opener. It also haggled its way around the top of the can, and once it slipped and almost cut off the operator's finger, which had to be bandaged for a month.
Then came the circular-swing can-opener. A projecting point was inserted in the center of the top of the can, and a projecting knife was run around the rim of the can, and there you were, as slick as a whistle. But the arm of the operator, holding the can firm during the process, became lame for the rest of the winter.
Finally came a can-opener that held the can fast to the table and sliced off the top with one easy turn of a wheel.
Thereupon all the other can-openers began to inveigh against the last contestant:
"Its work is too easy!"
"There's no discipline in it!"
"It doesn't strengthen the muscles!"
"It doesn't produce stamina!"
"Kindergarten methods!"
"To the nursery with it!"
But the operator bought the last can-opener, and used it blessedly forever after.
Tested Seed.
What is a better illustration of the "vanity of vanities" than to plant seed which never comes up? You have bought it with good money. You have spent good time and strength in preparing the ground, and planting the seed, and tending it. And for return you have—the same bare ground with which you started. Nothing in all the range of human endeavor and failure is more disappointing.
Now I have been reading the advice of a certain professor of agriculture—advice which he gave primarily to the farmers of Iowa, but it will answer as well for any set of seed-sowers.
Success in farming, he declares, is very largely a matter of the wise choice of seeds. Test your seeds, he says, if you would have good crops.
For instance, corn. Take seed grown in the neighborhood, seed that is used to the conditions of soil and climate which it will have to meet. Choose well-formed and uniform ears. Take six kernels from each ear, three from each side—two from the butt, two from the middle, and two from the tip. Then plant them and see whether they germinate. If they do not, throw away that ear. If they do, use it for your seed.
The professor says that choosing the seed thus carefully means an increased yield of thirty bushels to the acre. On a hundred-acre field, he says, the money gained would be from $500 to $2000. The testing could be done in a month, and in the winter. If he is right, the farmer that does not follow his advice will deserve to journey "over the hills to the poorhouse."
And whether he is right or is exaggerating, he is absolutely correct when you apply the statement to the realm of the spirit. The teacher and preacher and writer and parent—all that have to do with the instruction of others—and who does not?—will double their yield if they are careful about their seed. Not the first topic that comes to mind, not the first book at hand, not the first advice that occurs to you, but thought and prayer lavished upon the choice of all that is to enter into the make-up of immortal souls.
Oh, it will pay—thirty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-fold!
The Poor Rich Man.
A merchant from South America has arrived at the port of Boston. He is fifty-four years old, and cannot read his native language; of course he cannot read any other. He is worth at least half a million dollars, but that is his sad plight. Doubtless he does not realize its sadness.
He is beginning, however, to understand a little of what illiteracy means, for under our new immigration laws this rich man is detained by the port officers as an illiterate. He had not heard of the law, or thought it would not apply to him; but he has learned that it does apply to him, though he is half a millionaire, and he must await special permission of our government before he can go on his way.
When we think of what books mean, and of the wide range over the world of men and of thought given by the newspapers and magazines, we shall have nothing but pity for this man of wealth. With all his wealth he is poor indeed. Who would sell his acquaintance with Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Homer? Who would barter for a hundred million dollars his knowledge of the Bible and the power to hold daily communion through its pages with Moses and David and Isaiah, with John and Paul and Jesus Christ? An illiterate man is indeed a poverty-stricken man. Though all the bankers bow before him, he must himself bow before any boy graduating from a grammar school. His detention at the immigrant station is a trifle, for he is in prison—a mental prison—for all his life.