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Show VISIONARY EDUCATION. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat calls a halt in the wild career of folly and extravagance in the common schools! of that city, and asks that a system I of education for practical purposes and not for ornament, be adopted. The caute fur complaint is the expend of imparting to youth g-urra:ly a smattering of a lot of "olngien" that can do them no g m the future, lo the neglect of the mor modeot but eminently more useful mud its. We have no free schools h ie, hence tho same cause for complaint does not exist as in the larger citirs of the country ; but in Salt Lake the tendency ten-dency is toward the extravagant enlargement en-largement of the educational field. The number and variety of the text books required by the children of to-day fairly astonish parents who wero themselves liber ally educated in their youth. Wo ask, in good fditb, if somo of our instructors do not consider they aro paying too much attention to the "higher branches" to the neglect of the more useful? A good understand ing of arithmetic, of reading and spelling, of the general facts ot his- fl tory aDd geography, and of litera- r ture, very well qualify and prepare Q the child for the dutieB of life of the 0 average citizen; and these are about fi all the ordinary youth can success- fully master in the limited time al- y lowed him for school study. When j, he is compelled, from a souse of pride t not to be behind anothar in the 8 number and dignity of his studies, cr t by the requirements of the teacher, to wrestle with the mysteries of r higher mathematics, of botany, bi- j ology, astronomy, physics, Latin and Greok, or even the modern languages, j French and German, he is incapable of mastering any of them. When it t becomes necessary for him to close c his school studies and go forth to deal , practically with life, will he not die- j 03ver that his timo has been wasted in ( acquiring asmattering of many things , with a thorough knowledgeof nothing? ( This applicB to children as a mass, , and not to individual cases. Of course, where there are wealthy par- ents who can afford to keep their , children iu school year after year, it : ie different. The useful us well as the . ornamental shou'd properly be ac- , quired; but the average boy or girl has uo time in school to devote to the "accomplishing" studies to the neg lect of the practical. This applies with special force to tho foreign languages. It is "fashionable" to Btudy German and French; but how many ever find what little knowledge al those toDgucs they gain in the public pub-lic schools useful in after life? English Eng-lish is the language of the country, and the only one that is necessary. Were we all German and Frenoh scholars, not one in a baud red would ever have occasion to use any but the English tongue. Then give the child as thorough a knowledge of English as is possible, and do not waste his valuable time in a useless study of a foreiga language. Wo regret to see the tendency in our schools to the visionary education at the expense ot the truly valuable and practical, and we suggest that the subject of inaugurating a reform is worthy the consideration of teach en and parents. |
