Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-06
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL BILL.

LII NV -0OohkiOlsAA DILL
We have received the school law which
has been agreed upon by both legislative
committees, and have examined it. The
trainers of the new educational system
have labored under very great disabilities,
owing to the miserably perverse and in
adequate provisions of the new Constitu-
tons on this subject. That instrument,
indeed, has made it impossible to devise
system of education at all commensurate
with the requirements of the community,
and if it does not prove failure altogether,
through the want of harmony and coher-
ence, it will be no merit of the Constitu-
ton The new law appears to US to be
carefully drawn and as comprehensive as
the circumstances will permit, though we
are not clear that it would have been alto
gether impossible to provide in it for some
reflection of that better method of educa-
ton which is taking root in advanced
communities. We have said that the new
school law may be as good as the Constitu-
ton allows, but this is not saying that it is
a satisfactory school law. In fact it is not
Even supposing the difficulty about uni
formity of text books could be sur
moupted land this is consti-
tutional, not statute stumbling
block, we have here neither more
nor less than scheme reproducing in all
essentials that which it is to replace OF
course if the latter be good scheme. this
arrangement ought to be satisfactory. But
the latter is not good scheme, and 1t is
so far from being good that in most regards
it must be set down as a failure. The pub
lie schools to-day are doing very much less
to educate the people than most men real
lie. The instruction they afford is not, as
rule, of kind calculated to be useful in
after life. Far too much stress is placed
upon parrot learning of rules which the
pupils neither comprehend nor remember.
In the primary schools, where the instruc-
ton ought to be most careful, it is least so.
The most inexperienced teachers are set
over the most important schools. The en-
trance to the educational course is thus
beset with pitfalls for the scholar, and the
rudiments being ill-learned, bad founda-
ton is laid for all that follows. 1t
appears to us that some effort might
have been made to recognize and enforce
the Importance of specially careful
primary instruction in this bill.
All that we find here, however, is clause
forbidding the granting of teachers GER
tiicate to anyone under Is years of age.
And this is not reasonable proposition,
for if an applicant under Is is capable of
passing the necessary examination, he or she
is certainly fitted for the office of teacher
according to the only standard which the
law recognizes, namely intellectual attain
ments. There can be no good object to be
gained by excluding persons solely on the
ground of youth. 1t is conceivable that
some people may be as well informed at
eighteen as others are at one-and- twenty.
The ability to stand the test examination
is really the only proofof competencywhieh
ought to be recognized. Indeed this pro-
vision strikes us as being superfuous. We
should like to see in place of it some indi-
cation that the trainers of this bill have
given any thought to the Quincy methods
of teaching, and that they realize the
superiority of those methods to the ones
which have hitherto obtained in Cali
fornia.