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Show j Public Schools a Failure j ( Freeman's Journal.) rrr -idr iit Eliot of Harvard college re-Ft'-rds the public school system of A'neiica us a failure, and he arraigns it as su.h under important heads, as it'll nvs (in )js address last week at the annudi iiKcting of the Connecticut ta;e Toa.-hers' association): "For more than two generations we "avc- been struggling with the barbarous barbar-ous vP of drunkenness, but have not c;s'-o eiod a successful method of deal-"jP deal-"jP with it. The attempt to reach total 6hst:;K.n,p through the medium of the Hjblic schools has been an injury to the I Aching of science, inasmuch as ideas Jn'''-''mi)g the effect of alcohol were ,!'t which could not be proven true. "The persistence of gambling in the t n:ted States is another disappointing !nr to the advocates ,of popular eduction, edu-ction, it has injured the competitive f,0rts, and it is now a fact that betting j t S() t'ommon a thing that educated i r"'.?p!c' ai'e not ashamed of it. t! Jt is a reproach to popular educa- i fr."11 th:it the Sravest crimes of violence " , t ommitted in great number all over U United States by individuals and ?''1)s with large measures of impunity. 4 j ''he population produces a considerable I J Urnb.T of burglars, robbers, lynchers J j a&d. niurdorers, and is not intelligent )! . enough even to suppress or to exterminate exter-minate criminals. "The nature of the daily reading matter mat-ter supplied to the American public affords af-fords much ground for discouragement in regard to the results thus far obtained ob-tained by the common schools. Since one invaluable result of education is a taste for good reading, the purchase by the people of thousands of tons of ephemeral reading matter, which is not good in either form or substance, shows that one great end of popular education educa-tion has not been attained. "A similar unfavorable inference regarding re-garding popular education may be drawn from the quality of the popular theatres of today. The stage often presents pre-sents scenes and situations of an immoral im-moral sort. "Americans are curiously subject to medical delusions. They are the greatest great-est consumers of patent medicines in the known world, and the most credulous cred-ulous patrons of all sorts of medicine men and women and of novel healing arts. Is it not a just inference from the openness of the American mind to medical delusions that the common schools have not done what they ought towards developing the power to reason justly? "The industrial wars which so seriously seri-ously diminish the productiveness and prosperity of the country are evidences that the common schools have grappled unsuccessfully with the tremendous problems put before them; and this remark re-mark applies just as much to the employers em-ployers as to the employed." Here is a serious indictment by the head of one of the oldest and most famous educational institutions in America against an educational system which its champions boast of as the best in the world. And it is an indictment in-dictment sustained by evidence that those champions will find it hard to rebut. re-but. President Eliot points to results and to the absence of results to the positive evil done by the public schools and to their failure to do a great deal of positive good that public schools ought to do. He moreover points to the remedy when he asks "could anyone any-one imagine it to be unreasonable to spend for the moral and mental training train-ing of a child as much as is spent on his food?" Moral training.. There is what is wanted. But how can it be supplied under a' system which excludes ex-cludes the foundation and source of the moral idea? Banish religion from the school and how or where can the moral training come in, to which question ques-tion the following remarks of the famous fa-mous French statesman, M. Thiers, quoted by a writer in a recent issue of the London Fortnightly Review, are very pertinent: "If I had my way, instead of diminishing dimin-ishing religious influences I would place the control of all the elementary schools in the hands of the clergy. If you de-Christianize the masses they will rise up and murder you. There must be some higher authority for right-doing than that of the government govern-ment and the schoolmaster, and I defy anybody to produce 'anything better than the Ten Commandments with their august authority and majestic history." . The man who said this was very far from being "clerical" in his sympathies. sympa-thies. But, like President Eliot, he appreciatedvthe evil of education without with-out moral training. ,. i |