Weekly Trinity journal., 1871-10-14

SCHOOL, L-GROUNDS.

! DR.. T. H. Rose, in article in the Los Ange-
les Neeos thus gives his views upon what the
Fairgrounds connected with our public schools
should be:
Now regard nothing as better indication
of the good sense and refinement of a people
than the external and internal condition of their
school house. In the first place the grounds
should be large and enclosed with a neat board
fence Children were not made to be quiet. At
any rate their natures require vigorous outdoor
exercise, when required to be quiet in school
Their limbs need frequent motion, their health
is thereby improved, and the intensity and su-
perabundance of animal spirits is spent in play
out of doors rather than in school. Every thing
then that can be done to make the outside of the
school room more pleasant and the inside more
agreeable should be done. At least an acre of
land sbould be selected for the school ground of
every country school, in the most pleasant and
healthy locality that can be found The build
ing should be located back from the front fence
and close board fence should divide the grounds
that the sexes may have their play grounds and
out-buildings apart from each other. The fence
that encloses the grounds should not be rough
and uncouth and built in the cheapest STYLE
but should be of such form and design as would
not mar the beauty of the landscape, but would
help make it rather more picturesque. From the
gate to the door of entrance there should be a
good gravel walk of sufficient elevation that wa
ter would not gather on it in Winter. Pepper
trees should be planted inside the fence, at
little distance from it, all sides of the yard
Sunshine of course is necessary to health, but
the facilities of shade should be offered to chill
dren during the hot Summer days, when they
are sweltering with the heat, and yet 10th to
give up their play. We might even afford to go
a little further. Let beds of flowers be cultiva-
ted in the girls yard, the boys will be glad to
bring water to them daily. Think you that these
arrangements would make the pupils study less
earnestly Would their morals become deprav-
ed, their taste perverted or their health injured
were imbued with such a spirit of stimulating
utilizing and beautifying, they could easily in
duce their neighbors TO aid them some half day
in completing these arrangements and their girls
would then care less for dime novels, and their
boys less for cigarettes. With intense gratifca-
ton would the children look back in after life
upon these days of refined and innocent amuse-
ment and intercourse and when they returned
in other years to visit the old homestead and
enter the school house of twenty years ago, and
look upon the trees they planted, with what
power would be recalled the sweet associations
of boyhood and girhood. In what better way
can get rid of that vandalism which seems
TO possess American youth, who cannot see
a fence, or tree, or shrub, or flower, without
laying unholy hands upon it for its destruction.
| Such acts do not often characterize children who
have come from homes where beauty prevails,
where abound the trelis and the vine, gardens
blooming with flowers and lawns blossoming
with pretty shrubbery They come rather from
homes where nothing has been done to cultivate
their taste, refine their morals or quicken their
sense of the beautiful. Put such children under
better influences, surround them with healthful
associations let them grow up within an atmos-
phere of neatness and beauty, train their eyes
and judgments to discern the relations that con-
stitute the higher life, and you will have kindled
a light in their hitherto dark hearts, that shall
never go out The little knowledge OF books
that is gained at school is only one of the designs
of school life If nothing else is gained, the
American people are paying dearly for their
schooling. 1t is the Development of the whole
nature that is wanted, the inculcation of good
morals, the cultivation of good habits, and the
possession Of the will to grapple with the diff
culties of life, and the capacity to enjoy and feed
upon its scenes of grandeur and subimity."
| In India when horse can and will not draw,
instead of whipping, spurrng or burning him as
is frequently the practice in more civilized coun-
tries, they quietly get a rope and tying it to one
of the fore feet, one or two men take hold of it,