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Show DEFECTIVE SCHOOL CURRICULUM. Popular education is commendable. It is a public pub-lic duty. We do not attack the system but the method. About thirty years ago some wiseacre discovered that the then prevailing method of elementary education edu-cation was wrong. It may have been in some respects. re-spects. , No longer should nor could the three R's suffice as a basis. The whole thing was antiquated, monkish and could not stand the test. Modern scientific sci-entific processes were to be substituted and the J new generation was to be a wonder! Wc are tempted to say a winner! What has been tho result! re-sult! The general verdict of the public, of those who have to-do -with the graduates. is that the innovation in-novation is a failure. The methods of the old schoolmasters were not pleasant, they were over-harsh; over-harsh; but they were successful and the pupil did learn reading, Jriting and 'rithmetie within a reasonable rea-sonable time limit. He entered college at a reasonable reason-able age, thoroughly prepared for his new field of study. He could look to the day when he would enter upon the pursuit of his life vocation while yet a young man. Today the business man tells you that the high-school graduate can neither spell nor white ("which no one will deny,' as the old song says) ; the heads and deans of the universities proclaim pro-claim that the graduates come to them ill-prepared and too old.- Where does, the fault lie? Irresponsible, Irrespons-ible, incompetent pedagogues, chuck full of self-sufficiency; self-sufficiency; childless old maid professors of extra nature child psychology; petty-coated political faddists, fad-dists, adverse very often to raising children themselves, them-selves, have been allowed to browbeat us and load down the curriculum of the primary and grammar gram-mar grades with their fads. Some of the methods of teaching and of school government have been improved, but the general result has been to overcrowd over-crowd the curriculum. The time of the pupil is wasted on non-essentials or on. subjects which he cannot understand, devoid, of any merit as! mjnd-biuldcrs mjnd-biuldcrs or developers. So, he comes to'thchigh school too late. The child is put to school 'at five years, and, on an average, does not reach the high school until he is fourteen years and six months old. -Even then he has not learned his own language. lan-guage. He reads poorly, he cannot spell and he knows very little of English grammar. What has he been.loing during these nine years! Learning to study? - Developing his mental faculties? .No! He has been mastering fads. . Has he not been to school for nine years? No; he has been an inmate of a school building. He lias' not been "going to school." What will we do about it? Eeturn to first principles, cut out 'the fads, reduce by at least two years the time spent iu the primary and grammar grades. Fit the pupil to enter the high school at twelve years, the latest. Apply the pruning knife; apply it prudently, but apply it effectively. |
