Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1878-08-08
Educational Column.
CONDUCTED BY GEO. l.. WILLIAMS
County SUIT OF Schools:
SCHOOL SAVINGS BANKS.

subject we cut from the last report
of ex-State Sup't Soaring. The ideas
suggested by it will, to many, be new
and unthought of:
g 1t has long been my belief that
the public school system ought to be
more potent for good than it now is in
the direction of moral influences and
good habits. Judging from the school
code, the sole object Of the system is
to give formal instruction in certain
branches of knowledge-orthogr
reading, writing, gran mar, geography,
arithmetic, etc. But a mere knowl-
edge of these things is by no means
enough to qualify for right living and
good citizenship. 1t is right impulses
and good habits, even more than the
mastery of the arts of reading, writing
and numbering, that make good citi-
zens and successful men and women.
The safety Of the republic will not be
guaranteed by the total Punishment of
mere llliteracy.
90 There is habit, in high degree
conducive to individual and national
prosperity, which it seems to me might
be easily and largely fostered by the
system of public instruction. [ refer
to the habit Of saving, based ON a due
knowledge Of the value and use of
money. The American people are
especially a prodigal and wasteful peo-
pie. The great natural resources that
have been at their command, and the
ease and rapidity with which they
have hitherto acquired money, have
made them extravaganza and thought
ess of the future With the frugal,
thrifty and saving habits Of the French,
our people would to-day be the richest
and most prosperous people on the
globe, whereas now private and public
debt weighs like an incubus upon the
whole country, and pauperism is IN
creasing more rapidly than III any
other civilized land.
have for some time regarded with
interest the systematic efforts to form
saving habits in the young, now being
made i'll the public schools Of Great
Britain, Belgium and France. To
teach children the value of money, to
induce the desire and habit of saving,
and to practically acquaint them early
with some business forms and usages,
must certainly be recognized as legiti-
mate school work; as legitimate as in
struction in theoretical arithmetic or
bookkeeping, by the aid Of which the
business of the world is SO largely
conducted. That the disposition to
save, as all other dispositions and hab-
its, can be best cultivated in the young,
is and educational axiom. That it is
desirable for people to possess habits
Of thrift will be questioned by no one.
It may be doubted whether any other
quality ranks higher among the ele-
ments that make up really good ''citi-
zenship" than that known MS "thrift. y
The man who, for the sake Of accumu-
lating property, practices self-denial,
and puts weekly or monthly into a
savings bank his surplus earnings, is
in general a good citizen. He may
not be scholar; he may even be illit-
crate, but he will pretty surely be in
dustrious and law-abiding. More use
full as a citizen is the illiterate but
thrifty accumulation than the thriflless
prodigal, who is we'll versed in the
''three RS"
"W Whatever tends to enlarge in the
direction of good conduct, truthfulness,
industry, temperance, frugality, cour-
tesy, ETC., the present narrow and al
most exclusively intellectual training
Of the schools, is to be heartily well
coined by all good men, The estab-
lishment Of school savings banks on
some secure basis, and the general cul-
tivation thereby, in the young, of a
habit upon which individual and ma
tional prosperity so largely depends,
WOULD | believe, have the fullest ap-
prevail of thoughtful men.
"To show how simple is the admin
istratron of the system in the schools of
France, subjoin the following, trans
lated from the French, by Hon. S. T,
Merrill, of Beloit, and printed In the
Safeguard Almanac. for 1871:
"After having made proper arrange
ments with the nearest city or village
savings bank, the teacher informs his
scholars that he is ready to receive
their savings however small they may
be, and that on the first day of every
month all deposits amounting to one
franc, or to even francs, will be depos-
tied in the city savings bank to the
credit of the pupil thus dspositing,