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Show Again the School Bell Rings Out For 26,000,000 Young Americans They're Going to a Building That's Vastly Different from the "Little Old Red School House" Which Their Parents Knew; Equipment, Books and Teaching Methods Have Changed But the Spirit of "School Days" Is the Same Throughout the Years. Western Newspaper Union. Oh, the little old red schoolhouse fT ' 7LX on the hill, 1 f $ f Oh, the little old red schoolhouse f -V'k"' K -, n the hiii, r; v -fl 'iKXx"'7i,v" And my heart with joy o'er- iNVl - ?j ' S K J" -JSw-- flows, 'rsV 'vNl T1 Like the dew drop in the rose, , V'CS- Thinking of the little old red p , - f tSH V 1 schoolhouse on the hill! - ? ' - CTV (From "The Male Quartet's Compen- . v , ,f By ELMO SCOTT WATSON f &f?Jv if i-f v ' SOME Monday morning .T r 1 during the next two or l ' 'j-bs' 0" s three weeks, more than I Tz-Z t- 26,000,000 young Americans - c - i 'ZZi -M will be streaming along our vssT " 1 1 S U 1? country roads or through 1", 4 1 1 -l the streets of our villages, ! . l r'-" I ? -rrr Z ' " t towns and cities and all of them will have a common objective the school house. For it is the "first day of school" and across the broad expanse of these United States thousands of schools will be swinging wide their doors to receive the members mem-bers of this youthful army who are coming to take their places in renovated and refurbished classrooms to begin another year of learning. As Mother watches Bud and Sis bustling away between eight and nine o'clock on that Monday morning, perhaps she will find herself humming the tune of that old song quoted above. Of course, she realizes that it isn't a "little old red school house on the hill" any longer. It's been replaced by a more modern structure that is painted white and has, perhaps, per-haps, over the door a little name-plate name-plate which tells the passer-by that this is a "Standard School." Or it may be a big brick or stone edifice a modern "consolidated school" for the children of a number num-ber of districts. And there have been other changes, too in equipment, in the books the children study, in the teaching methods. For we have "gone modern" in our schools as in every other phase of contemporary life. And yet, for all these ' transformations, there's something unchanging, timeless, eternal, about "school days." That's why Mother smiles to herself as she softly hums that old tune. In Bud and Sis, as they trudge away to school, she sees herself as she was in those halcyon days which now seem so very, very far away the days of her own childhood. And for a little moment she drinks deep once more at the Fountain of Youth! But quite aside from our senti mental attachment to the "Little Old Red Schoolhouse on the Hill" as the symbol of an era in American life that is gone forever, for-ever, there is another reason for our regarding it with something akin to reverence. In his "Back Home" sketches (first published in the old McClure's Magazine and later collected in book form) Eugene Wood wrote this interpretation interpre-tation of the social significance of the "Little Old Red School-house": School-house": "Perhaps it wasn't little, or old, or red, or on a hill. It might have been big and new, and built of yellow brick, right next to the Second Presbyterian, and hence close to the "branch," so that the spring freshets flooded flood-ed the playground, and the water lapped the base of the big rock on which we played 'King on the Castle' the big rock so pitifully shrunken of late years. But no matter what the facts are, sing of the Old Red Schoolhouse on the Hill and in everybody's heart a chord trembles in unison we are brethren knitted together into one living solidarity. And this, if we but sensed it, is the Union of which the federal compact is but the outward seeming. It is a union in which they have neither nei-ther art nor part whose parents sent them to private schools, so as not to have them 'associate with that class of people.' It is the really truly Union. "If you would learn in fact the THE MOST FAMOUS "LITTLE OLD RED SCHOOLHOUSE" IN AMERICA It is the Redstone school at Sudbury, Mass., immortalized immor-talized in the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb." The building is now owned by Henry Ford. secret of our nation's greatness, take your stand some winter's morning just before nine o'clock when you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, ra-dius, the center being the Old Red Schoolhouse. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, plowing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing- to the schoolhouse, Bub in his wam-mus wam-mus and his cowhide boots, his cap with earlaps, a knitted comforter com-forter about his neck; and little Sis, in a thick shawl, trudging along behind him, stepping in his tracks. They chirrup 'Good morning, sir!' As far as you can see them you have to watch them and something rises in your throat. Lord love 'em! Lord love the children! "And then it comes to you, and it makes you catch your breath to think of it, that every two or three miles all over this land, wherever there are children at all, there is the Old Red School-house. School-house. At this very hour a living liv-ing tide, upbearing the hopes and prayers of God alone knows how many loving hearts, the tide on which all of our longed-for ships he did an amazing thing. He gave up his law practice and his position in the state senate sen-ate to become secretary of the newly created Massachusetts board of education. "Foolish and visionary," even his best friends called him, "to barter his prospects pros-pects for political life for a post where returns are so small and where his efforts are spent in riding rid-ing from county to county looking after the welfare of children who will never know whence the benefit bene-fit came." But Mann, the visionary, thought differently about that. At that time the Massachusetts public schools, 'although they had been in existence nearly two centuries, cen-turies, were in a pitiful condition. condi-tion. One third of the commonwealth's common-wealth's children had no educational educa-tional opportunities whatever. The new secretary began his work with little encouragement from the authorities of his state. But he was undaunted by this fact. For the next 10 years he worked unceasingly to carry the gospel of free schools throughout Massachusetts. Better buildings, qualified teachers, longer terms, I efficient teaching methods, libra- - ' i s 4 1 1 i if i vO It was an important day on the calendar of the "Little Old Red Schoolhouse" when the board of directors visited it to test the progress prog-ress of the pupils with a "spell-down." (From a drawing by C. S. Reinhart in Harper's Weekly, 1872, reproduced in the Yale University Univer-sity Press' "Pageant of America.") are to come in, is setting to the schoolhouse. Oh, what is martial mar-tial glory, what is conquest of an empire, what is statecraft alongside along-side of this? Happy is the people that is in such a case!" If indeed within the walls of the "Little Old Red Schoolhouse" (symbol of all our free schools) there lies, as Wood says, "the secret of our nation's greatness," then one of our greatest national heroes should be the man who, a hundred years ago, had just started to carry the gospel of free schools throughout one state. For after winning his campaign in that state, his ideal spread eventually to all the others. Horace Mann was his name. Born near Franklin, Mass., on May 4, 1706, Mann's youth was a bitter struggle to get the rudiments rudi-ments of an education. He never nev-er attended school for more than 10 weeks in any single year up to the age of fifteen and he had to braid straw in his father's farmhouse farm-house to get enough money to buy his books. Mann worked his way through Brown university, also through a law school at Litchfield, Conn., graduated, hung out his shingie and soon built up a prosperous law practice. He went into politics, poli-tics, was elected to the state senate sen-ate and chosen president of that body. And then on June 1, 1837, ry facilities, all were emphasized in his lectures and in his writings. writ-ings. Mann was influential in getting his state to establish the first normal nor-mal school in the United States at Lexington which opened its doors July 3, 1839, to three young women. Within the next decade Massachusetts Massa-chusetts spent more than $2,000,-000 $2,000,-000 on school buildings and equipment equip-ment and had established 50 new public high schools. Gradually Mann's influence spread through other states and by 1848, when he was ready to retire from this work and return to a political career (he was elected to congress con-gress to succeed John Quincy Adams),, Ad-ams),, the public school movement move-ment was gaining impetus all over the United States and Mann was a national figure. Today the first object one sees when he approaches the Massachusetts Massa-chusetts statehouse in Boston is a statue of this pioneer educator. And not without good reason is there a bust of him in the Hall of Fame at New York university, among those of statesmen, authors, au-thors, artists, inventors, explorers explor-ers and military heroes. None of them bears a prouder inscription than that which is written below his. It is: "The common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man." For that was the credo of Horace Mann. |