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Show SCHOOL AFFAIRS ARE DISCUSSED AT A MEETING A number of prominent citizens of Ogden met last night at the county court house for the purpose of discussing discuss-ing the educational situation In the Ogden public schools and to take some action toward the Improving of the system. Dr. C. E. Coulter was elected chairman of tho meeting and Mrs. J. M. Bishop, secretary. At the meeting a committee consisting con-sisting of Mrs. J. M. Bishop, Mrs. Clayton Coolidge, W. H. Meal, Eugene Eu-gene A. Battell and Dr. E. P. Mills wn8 appointed. This committee was instructed to draft plans for a permanent per-manent citizens' organization for tho purpose of discussing problems that may arise at any time in the school system of Ogden. The committee was further Instructed to draft the plans this week and submit them at a meeting to be held In the courthouse court-house next Monday night Dr. Coulter, at the beginning of the meeting, said that the people had concluded that there was something radically wrong with the Ogden school system and thought that the matter needed attention. The meeting therefore, there-fore, had been called so that the cause could be diagnosed, if possU ble, and action taken to clear it up. After his talk he turned the meeting over to the gathering for a general discussion. Dr. E. P. Mills made an excellent talk, at the beginning of which ho asked if the meeting had been called for the purpose of making an attack on anyone connected with the school administration or to organize for the purpose of getting posted on general questions of educational methods and the methods used In the Ogden schools. The latter purpose was given giv-en by those in authority as the reason for calling the meeting and Mr. Mills then said that the people who, aj stockholders In a corporation, were putting nearly 150,000 a year into it, furnishing the -"raw material" for It to work upon and then accepting the finished or "unfinished" product prod-uct were certainly entitled to be thoroughly familiar with Its methods of working and that their opinion should have some weight with the officers of-ficers who were administering its affairs. Mrs. J. M. Bishop, during the discussion, dis-cussion, quoted from the new Encyclopaedia Ency-clopaedia of Education to the effect that, "Industrial education is too expensive ex-pensive to be put into operation anywhere any-where except in concentrated industrial indus-trial districts and that it has not been tried out long enough in Cincinnati, Cin-cinnati, Ohio, or Fitchburg, Mass., to justify its being called successful." Tho new Encyclopaedia, of Education was compiled by Professor Paul Mun-roe Mun-roe of Columbia university and is considered the best authority on the subject extant. It is in four volumes and a set is owned by the Carnegie library in Ogden. Other speakers at the meeting were W. W. Browning, Rev. Rassweiler. Eugene A. Battell, O. A. Kennedy and Mrs. Clayton Coolidge. The discussion dis-cussion was general and among the things mentioned was the half-day school plan advocated by Superintendent Superin-tendent J. M. Mills References to this wore very heated in some instances in-stances but in the main, the desire was to be fair minded. At the meeting next Tuesday night the general public will be Invited. A review of the past three months agitation of local school problems was given by a number of speakers in the discussion that followed. All of the speakers expressed emphatic opinions that the system needed a change and several planB were submitted, sub-mitted, but no definite action was taken. W. H. Meal said that to remedy rem-edy the system, the work should be started in the primary grades, but Dr. Coulter was of the opinion that the trouble lay in the head of the system and urged that an Investigation Investiga-tion be made of the manner In wheih the schools were managed by the school board and the superintendent. The opinion was also expressed that the best thing to bo done was to have a school survey made by an unbiased committee of able educators. |