The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1877-01-25
TEE COMMON SCHOOL

IL II" SOoA AlSCSOSo Oi Al "llly
Its doors worn sill betraying
The feet, that creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing"
The foregoing is a picture of the
old school room from which years
ago, unanimously poured the rosy
reality of boys and girls who one
half of the year worked by the side
of fathers and mothers and the other
fraction, worked under the supper
vision of men and women, who knew
from stern experience the force of
the old maxim, "te labor is to pray"
With Webster's Elementary spelling
book, the old English reader, Pike
or Adams Arithmetic and Murry's
Grammar, the whole outfit costing
but a trife, our fathers and mothers
wendell their way to the common
school house, and when they come
out the combined education Of labor
and study enabled them to meet and
take up life's burdens, and bear
them with the strength of Athletes
along life's journey. One of our
ablest thinkers, however much some
may differ with him politically, has
recently advanced the idea that our
Common School system has been of
late years, outgrowing its usefulness,
because the pedantry of teachers and
false notions of parents stranded
pupils upon the threshold of life,
somewhat learned in the text of
books but physically emasculated
and unnerved in the presence Of du-
TVS stern employment, and advocates
a return 10 the severe and simple
logic of educating children to labor
as we'll as to study.
We notice with pleasure that the
Legislature of u State has, at the
present term, under consideration a
bill, the purpose of which is to break
up the monopoly in school books
which like a fungus has fastened
itself upon the artiticialities of the
plain old system which for years has
been only too fast, outrunning the
splendid conception which gave it
birth, and is spawning upon the COM
munity as its results young men and
women "too proud to work and
ashamed to beg" Now the few plain
text books which contained all the
elementary principles of a sound ed
ucation, are displaced by a long ar
ray of mere pretentious but far less
sensible books, which Boards of Ed
ucation compel the poor to buy at
most exorbitant prices, in order to
fatten a few monopolists, and too
often to put a per cent Of the i'll
gotten gains into the avaricious
pockets of those who manage the
schools. We hope the bill will pass.
If the purse Of these monopolists
can secure the labor of-men who. can
cripple text books, stealing from the
brain work of the past to fill the
pages, why cannot the State, and
having secured the copy right afford
to the poor books at cost? Why
should these great publishing hous-
es, from which each year some mem
bers retire with princely fortunes,
hang like barnacles upon the free
educational system of the people?
1t is the most arrant folly. Let us
come back to the old landmarks and
commence once more turning out
men and aComen from the portals of
these Colleges of the people. Let us
trample down the frippery and fop-
perry, which high salaries and stilted
notions are Haunting in the face of
labor and making the system, SO
grand and beneficient in its original
design ,odious in the sight of thought
full, earnest labor.
We say, God speed to the legisla-
tors who will prove true to the mas
es in the opening contest of honest
toll, with monopoly in the supplies
of a system which should be as free
as the air we breathe and within
reach of the humblest child of the
State. The people will not forget the
representatives who are true and
faithful to their interests.
The Republican Legislature of O.