New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1879-01-08
Going to School. "
By N. QUAD.

DO those people who are signing fer
departure from. the present school system
realize what results might follow7 l
think not. don't believe they are pre-
pared for the awful consequences which
would follow q departure from the
monotony OF text books and stereotyped
class examinations. They must know that
the moment you treat pupil in school
hours as it he was not q prisoner. he will
at once kick up rebellion and forge thp
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 biographies,
srithmetics, spelling books, readers, etc,
for instruction of school children. It fol-
lows as matter Of necessity, that pupils
have no business to learn anything except
from these books. It 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 go
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 "primitlve'' meant twin
hltching-posts or fire alarm. and when I
asked her the meaning of the word
compound she looked from an apple
peddler's 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 sen.
tenoc! 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 san appe llor is one
that makes appeal and wiaile 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,
strangely.
HE vas such good boy. and he stud
led so hard, 'wept his mother; and took
a look at the dead boys 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 1e-
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 tx
amples on the Sabbath, in order TO he
"perfect" on Monday. l soon found where
he had left off in his arithmetic. II was
an example reading about rs 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, third OF the mules fall into d
mud-hole, 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, ell right. 1t was
there to De learned, and he must learn it
or die. Just imagine how utterly unfit
that bow would have been to society and
business circles without being able to
answer such examples off-hand!
was talking with school teacher the
other day who will certainly come to
some bad end if be 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 mat,ered
not how the pupils learne 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 nut
the answer not regularly laid down in
the textbooks. This teacher sets another
awful example. Right in the face of the
fac: that there is school-reader contain
ing the history OF William Penn and the
adventures of Mary's little lamb, he takes
magazine Q: newspaper into his school
room, and says:
Nov, children, shall let one Of you
read this report OF recent excavations at
Pompeii. Before we read, let some one