Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-07-24

sepulchral parlor, where flowers bloom and
songs break forth and there are times to
laugh, and they read aloud and the talk is
tree, and hospitality a virtue. What an
education intelligent and frequent guests
bring into house,
Coming to a school education, the best.
ideally conside red, is that of the public
school. Private schools are apt, with
some bright exceptions, to be run for the
benefit Of the proprietor first and that of
the scholar next. The best pay is secured
by the teachers popularity, and that de-
ponds upon his skill to please first his
pupils and then their parents. This can
be easiest accomplished on the whole by
having pretty pleasant and easy going
times with the least outside supervision.
Good accounts Of the scholars given by
themselves and corroborated by the teach
er and rose-colored exhibition or show
day, now and then, goes we'll But in the
public schools, with an independent and
responsible supervision, not only can
greater thoroughness in study be secured,
but better moral ventilation can be got
at and reuedied by methods that must
needs be meddlesome and impracticable
in the conduct of private schools.
There is also a democratic training in
the public school that belongs to a bows
education. He is to be an American citi-
zen, and he should understand from the
first the doctrine of equal rights and priv
ileges. He should get an insight into the
average human nature that he is to deal
with through life. If there be bows of
German or Irish parentage growing up
around him, he had better know them as
boys before he has to know them as men,
and utce gersa, they had better know him.
1t is essential to our political system to
fuse all classes and nationalities into the
American spirit and methods, and the way
to do it is to have the boys understand
each other Though evil and good be
mixed together in what may seem to be a
hazardous degree, the scum will sooner
rise to the surface and be easier skinned
off.
There Is, too, an unconscious education
given by the rural surroundings Of boys,
which is not least in value The number
and variety Of ideas that a healthy and
active boy gets into his head outside of
books, and already tasseling out into the
full corn of manhood, is astonishingly
great. The autobiography Of a boys life
from five to fourteen, could it be uncon-
sciously reported in boy language by his
own consciousness, would be rare con-
tribution to mental and educational sci
ence. We saw little fellow, the other
day, aboard Connecticut River Railroad
train, who had come alone from his Gull
tured home in a suburb of Boston, to
seek a six months term of education on Il
farm in Conway. His elder brother had
been there last summer and so the bows of
that family have the routine Of school edu-
cation interrupted and rounded out by the
training of the farm. The rule of three,
allegation, cube-roOt, and a great deal more
OF such tlresome lore, may tell very little
on after life, but to know how to harness
and manage a horse, and milk a COW, and
plant garden, and set out trees, and prune
vines, and hundred other things that be-
long TO the details of Wellmanaged farm.
will prove very useful, not only through
the practical knowledge gained, but by the
incidental training of the Judgment and
the common sense.
The unconscious education of q country
life by its suggestions and associations is
priceless, and the city bred boy is very I'M
fortunate who misses of it altogether 1t
Is one OF the best results of the summer
migration of city families into the coun-
| try, that the children do get something of
it. Better still, ifyou have Il trusty rela-
tive or friend who owns a farm, to put
your boy down to it for one season, at
least, from blowing to harvest time.
Apply the boy who spends all his boy
ish days in some steady going, heightened
rural village, where, instead of pavements
and saloons, there are squirrels and blue
jays, .partridgcs and trout, green pastures
and breezy barns, twittering swallows,
chestnuts and shagbarks, and all the glo-
ries of woods and meadows, ponds and
brooks. There is a freshness and sweet
ness thus impaired which will lend tone
and fragrance to the latest day of life