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Show eutd WOMORROWl II FRANK PARKER II s t ojyyyjMjl SCHOOL crude The first school of which I have any clear memory was a one-room "district school" in a little New England village, I was five years old, but I had already learned to read and write, so I sat with much older boys and girls on the "third reader" benches. The pupils were graded from the "first reader" infants in-fants down in front to the "sixth reader" rows at the back, occupied occupi-ed by boys and girls of twelve or older. The "central heating" system consisted of a big pot-bellied cast-Iron cast-Iron stove in the middle of the schoolroom. The' older boys were detailed to stoke the fire with wood. It got her-hot in below-zero weather. There was a wooden water-bucket with a tin dipper from which everybody drank when thirsty. There was no such thing as plumbing, anywhere in the village. vil-lage. LEARNING books I suppose at least half of the men and women of my generation got all the "book-learning" they erer had in just such country schools. We were taught to write 'n ruled "copybooks" with such maxims as "honesty is the best Policy" printed In flowing script at 'he top of each page. In our school we used the "Monroe" "Mon-roe" readers, from first to sixth, filled with verses, short essays, extracts ex-tracts from the writing of great authors, which we had to read aloud. Many boys and girls got a t-Jste for good literature from those old "readers." In arithmetic e were drilled In addition, subtraction, sub-traction, multiplication and division, divis-ion, with fractions and even decimals dec-imals for the older pupils. Spelling was strongly emphasized, emphasiz-ed, and we used to have "spelling bees" much like those one can bear today on the radio We got a smattering of geography, from big. Hun books with colored maps and I'ictures of strange animals and "ple, and we all had to learn to draw a map of our own state. School opened every day with a Prayer and reading from' the Bi-(Continued Bi-(Continued on Page Six) The final test of any educational education-al scheme is whether or not it builds character. .More knowledge is not enough; though the head of a great business said to me lately that he would take on any man or woman who had a thorough thor-ough knowledge of any one subject, sub-ject, whether to his business or not; for to have mastered one thing thoroughly Is evidence that one has learned to think. Mere vocational training is not enough. The object of education is not to enable people to earn a living, but to teach them how to live. "Practical" folk sometimes scoff at the "frills" which have been added to the old-fashioned "Three R's" by modern schools. But It is the so-called frills which broaden the Intellectual outlook and help to build character and the cuture which is founded on character. We have a long way to go before be-fore our public education systems will turn out young men and women wo-men of uniformly high standards of character and culture. Until we have built the system to that level nobody should begrudge the spending of any amount om money mon-ey that it may take. Good citizens are more important than good roads, great navies or most of the other material things we tax ourselves our-selves to provide. Today and Tomorrow (Continued from Page One) Mo, followed by singing. We had "MlngiiiK books" with the words anil music of patriotic and popular pop-ular songs. The song I remember brat was "Not for Joe," which riillnulod the Woman Suffrage movement to a catchy tune. It was a maHcullne world. TEACHING .... discipline Teaching school was a man's occupation oc-cupation in my childhood. Many of the rural teachers of the 1870's were students earning money to pay their expenses at Harvard or Yale of the smaller colleges. One of tho necessary qualifications for a country teacher was physical nblllty to maintain discipline. The farm boys were pretty husky and had no respect for a teacher who couldn't lick them. A birch switch or a hickory stick always stood beside the teacher's desk and was used on children who were unruly. The first teacher I remember, a red-niustached red-niustached college man named Herbert Field, took a ruler to me once. I had caught the coat of the boy ahead of me with a fishhook fish-hook and pulled him down when he got up to recite. Later we had a woman teacher, widow of the village cigar-maker, whose father was a member of the school board. We all liked he because be-cause she let us do as we pleased. Then my folks moved to Washington Washing-ton and I got Into the city schools. I had women teachers in the sev-onth sev-onth and eighth grades, and after that they were all men. With most of them, teaching was a life career. car-eer. EDUCATION cost In those old days the Idea of education as a function of the state was still a shadowy concept. Local communities provided what they could afford for their children child-ren and anything beyond that was a luxury which the student or his family had to pay for. Today, however, everybody realizes that the interests of the state and the nation are involved in the problem prob-lem of education, as well as those of the community and the individual. indiv-idual. Children of the poorest farmer or city slum-dwelled now get a better education, under better surroundings, sur-roundings, with better-trained teachers, than anybody got when I was a schoolboy. States contribute contri-bute from tax funds to aid in maintaining and improving local schools, because of the realization that only by education can American Ameri-can standards of citizenship be implanted im-planted and maintained in a changing and confusing civilization. civiliza-tion. Modern education costs more. It calls for better equipped teachers teach-ers at higher pay, and more of them to equip the youth of today to face the world on his own. CHARACTER . . . knowledge |
