The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-05-31
Fl Ri9.

Il THREE RS,
Professor Mahaffy's constantly recurring
complaint regarding the grammar-schools of
Ireland, that there is such a multiplicity of
subjects that the school boys, where not over
worked, are added by the great quantity of
subjects, is not without its application to the
graded schools of American cities.
In several grades of the grammar-schools
children are given ~percents. on from seven to
ten subjects. Reading, writing and numbers
are an education within themselves. The
first opens the door to all knowledge, yet our
grammar-school graduates can rarely read
the daily papers intelligently in the home cir
Gle, and our high-school graduates are so
swamped with the smattering of whatsoever
can be taught or known" that the habit of lit
erary reading is not formed in school. Writ
ing, as a means of expression of thought and
of intercommunication in social and business
relations, can not be said to be adequately
taught III our grammar-schools. We
do not mean following set copies
in a fair hand; most Of our
third reader pupils can do that, and, as a gen
eral rule, the penmanship is better in the
grammar than in the highs-chools. Writing
and reading should be made the vehicles
in our schools for carrying to the child
mind a knowledge of history, physiology
and grammar. Textbooks, on these subjects,
should never be committed in set recitations,
but a great variety of such books should be
used as reference books. Throw the grammar
books and sentence books away, by all means,
and substitute for them teachers who use good
English, and correct bad English whenever
they hear it from children. The most I'M
grammatical English may be heard from both
teachers and pupils, in the wild endeavors to
inculcate and explain Mr.. SwintOn's or Mr..
Quackenbos's views of the metaphysics of
the subjunctive mood. It is bosh, and it is
time wasted. Substitute for all grammar
books, and mere sentence building books, daily
exercises in writing about subjects of which
the children have thorough knowledge.
Number widens the mind; 1t leads
out to ~infnity; it is essential in
mental discipline and in business affairs.
Children can scarcely get enough of it, and,
in one form or another, there should be exer-
cises in mathematics, from the primary schools
through the university.
There is no discount on the three Rs if
they are properly taught. Yet the fact is
patent that our grammar-school children, when
they are done with the schools, are not able to
do Colburn's mental arithmetic; cannot write
Their energies have been frittered AVA among
many subjects, They are added. They have
passed in reading, writing, arithmetic, spell
ing, composition, drawing, music, history of
the United States, geography and general
science lessons. One Of these subjects is as
much to the child as the other, and it is to be
feared that they stand in Almost equal rank
with the immature girls who, without broad
culture themselves, are set over them as
ttdClNCIoJ Nio w 1dlOLiA0llJ S1I4 , AAN O0O LIZ
complex and top-heavy programme arranged
by the supervision.
Mr.. Arnold tells us, in his review of Stafford
Brooke's Primer of English Literature, that if
you once secure what is excellent to be taught
you cannot teach it with too much insistence,
punctuality and universally. 1t is all right
to nave all the French boys saying the same
lesson at the same time, if the lesson is a
proper and worthy one. The more, he says,
one secs of the young, the moro one is struck
with two things-how limited is the amount
they can really learn, how worthless is much
of what goes to make up that amount now.
The journal is the friend and advocate of the
them. They are the great Jewelers. in this
country. They are truly democratic, They
are the teachers in discipline and organization.
Were 1t not for the public schools we could
never carry, educate and Americanize the
heterogeneous clements that constitute
American society. For this very cause, we
point out what reason, and Judgment, and
experience seem to show to be errors in the
schools; and the. overloaded curriculum is GER
tainly against their best interests.
THE late William Maxwell, who left a beauest