Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1879-01-02
Going TO School. !"
nY II. QUAD.

| BY II. QUAD. 3 SIS n 5ss,.s* .s 1902
do those people who are signing for a
departure from the present school system.
realize what results might follow2 l
think not. I don't believe they are pre-.
pared for the awful consequences which
would follow a departure from the
monotonY Of textbooks and stereotyped
class examinations. They must know that
the moment you treat pupil in school
hours as 1t he was not prisoner. he will
at once kick up rebellion and forge this
books.
| Children are sent to school TO learn; we
all know that. Certain eminent men
have been called upon, or have called
upon themselves, to compile geograph ies,
srlthmetics. spelling-books, readers, etc,
Tor instruction of school-children. It fol-
lows as a matter of necessity, that pupils
have no business to learn an ything except
from these books. If teacher should
take it into her head to explain to the
pupils the difference between poetry and
blank-verse, or explain any interesting
question in natural history, she should be
| severely reproved, because none of the
schoolbooks refer to such things.
The other day met bit of girl CO.
ing to school with tears in her eyes and
Sanders new speller in her hand. She
could spell, but Sanders had told her, and
her teacher had cautioned her, to COM
NIT to memory the fact tina, "Words are
either primitive, derivative, simple or
compound" The child DIDN'T know
whether the word "primitive' meant twin
hltching- posts or fire alarm, and when I
asked her the meaning of the word
"compound' she looked from; an apple.
peddlers wagon on to lamp
post and back, as if the sig.
niicance of the word lowered between
the two. I didn't explain or assist her, Of
course. Because Sanders put that sem
teneci his speller, it follows that pupils
must earn it, even though their teacher
could not write it down and spell half the
words correctly. That same little girl,
hardly ten years of age, must learn from
the same book that ''indorser is one that
indorses," and that IAN app lloc is one
that makes appeal,' and waile she may
learn the words by heart, she will know
their meaning just about as much as her
teacher knows why Lake Michigan is
longer than it is broader.
Around the corner they buried four
teen year-old boy the other day. he
didn't die OF scarlet fever or any other
pronounced disease. In fact the doctor
never made up his mind what to call it.
The boy became pale, haggard, and
thin, suffered much with his head,
and in his last hours he talked wildly and
strangely.
Vie was such good boy, and he stud
led so hard, "wept his mother; and I took
look at the dead boy 3 schoolbooks. He
had been studying mathematics, history.
photography, writing, natural philosophy,
and two or three other things, and when
his mother ''came to remember" she re-
called that his lessons kept him at his
books from breakfast till nine o'clock in
the evening, and that she had sometimes
caught him working mathematical ex-
amples on the Sabbath, in order to lie
"perfect" on Monday. l soon found where
he had left off in his arithmetic. 1t was
an example reading about as follows: ''If
A, has ten oxen which weigh eight hun
dred pounds each, and B. has fourteen
mules which weigh four times as much,
and one-thi1d OF the mules fall into
mud hoe, and. four of the oxen lose their
left ears, what will be the weather next
week."
do not say that this example killed
the boy. If 1t did, all right. It was
there to De learned, and he must learn it
or die. Just imagine how utterly unfit
| that boy would have been to society and
business circles without being able to
answer such examples off-hand
- / was talking with a school teacher the
other day who will certainly come to
some bad end if he does not change his
opinions. He had the audacity to hold
| that children went to school not as pris-
oners, but as pupils, the social equals of
teachers, but obeying orders because re-
alizing that discipline advanced the in
terests of all. He held that it mattered
not how the pupils learnet that Michigan
was bound on the south by Ohio and In
diana, SO long as they came to distinct
knowledge OF the fact, and he therefore
said to his young class in geography:
"Now, children, the President of the
United States used to live in Ohio, and
Senator Morton, now dead, lived in In
diana. Tell me in what direction those
two States lie from Michigan"
1t is very wrong in him, because the
pupils take real pleasure in hunting out
the answer not regularly laid down in
the textbooks. This teacher sets another
awful example. Right in the face of the
fact that there is school-reader contain
| inn tho hiatoru of W;li,ono Damn on1 TIM
adventures OF Mary's little lamb, be takes
magazine or newspaper into bis school
room, and says:
| "Now, children, shall let one of you
read this report of recent excavations at
Pompeii. Before we read, let some one
tell me where Pompeii isl
I'm Italy," is the answer.
sand what happened the city,"
| No answer, because it is not down in
their readers.
ut was buried by ashes and mud from
an eruption of Mont Vesuvius," he said ;
land now where is that mountaina"
"In Italy,"
'|Correct; and it again shows signs OF
an eruption. We will now read"
In half an hour not only one class, but
the whole school, has learned geogra ply,
history, natural philosophy, aud some
thing of art, in the one lesson, and each
pupil goes home to relate what was read,
to discuss it, and perhaps to learn new
facts. However, it is wrong-very wrong.
What is to become of our children if we
permit such :hings2
The Rev. DR.. Bushnell calls the de-
mand for female suffrage san attempt to
make trumpets out of flutes and suntlow.
era ont nf viO1afs },