The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-19
LESS SCHOOLING AND MORE EDUCATION.

liz LNONCDlDtl 1NOLLL '
contains a timely and excellent paper on
'Half-time in Schools, " by Edward Everett
Hale. The writer, with excellent show of
reason, argues in favor Of a reduction Of the
hours of sehool-room study. This, he thinks,
could be accomplished in either of two ways:
by forming the schools into two brigades and
having each attend school alternately for a
Germ, or by splitting the day and have half at
tend in the forenoon and half in the after
boon. His chief objection to the System"
that now obtains, and that is slowly, but sure
ly crushing out all originality in pupils and
teachers alike, is that so many things that
could be and should be learned outside of the
sehool-room, are made a part of the curricu-
snm, and insisted upon with a vehemence that
admits of no variation. ""The music fails in
churches, and the schools are set to teach
music; the girls cannot mend their clothes,
and the schools must undertake sewing; a
boy does not know a handful of wheat when
he sees it in his fathers Office, the father
makes a row, and the schools have object
these things should be learned, of course; but
they, and ten thousand other and equally inn
portant matters, which from very numbers
gould not be thought of in 'the schools, " may
much more easily and practically be taught at
home, in the workshop, or on the
farm. A boy ought to know
how to husk corn, dig potatoes,
sharpen a saw and to use it afterwards; a girl
ought to know how to darn, mend, sew, boil
cabbage and broil a beefsteak; and both ought
10 know how to swim, climb, harness a horse
and to plant a garden. But these and the
thousand other things have no business in the
schools, and can be acquired much more read
lily outside. Despite all the Boosting of those
who are coddling the System" and endeav-
oring to get the people to adopt it in all its
imperfect perfection, the well-educated boy
and girl '..absorbs" ten lines from the pleasing
book of nature to where one is bored into
him in school from the uninviting page of a
textbook.
The System" teaches facts, and the pupil,
thoroughly disciplined, on examination day
Iattles off the correct answers to scores of
questions that would puzzle a United States
senator. But how long does this veneering
stick7 How long is it until the brightest
graduate of high-school, of academy, and of
even the university, forgets the year in which
John Knox, Milton, Melanchthon, Cromwell,
or even Napoleon, was born and in which
either diedl Yet all these things must be
Learned in the schools, and at he very
same time they are being Learned" the un-
happy victims of System are happily pick
ing up a practical education in the outer
who learns what a rabbit is, or has an oriole
flash before his eyes, sees it swinging in a
sycamore, OF tucked away in its sack-like nest,
never forgets what a rabbit looks like, though
he live a hundred years, and could, after a
lapse of half a century, easily distinguish an
oriole from any other bird, while the sycamore
and its fuzzy balls are indelibly stamped on
his memory. From the object-lessons of ma
ture it is safe to say that the boy not cooped
up in school, so as to shut him out from them,
learns more-very much more-than he could
in books in the same space of time. Cham
pions Of the System" will yet be brought to
understand that their duty is not so much to
teach facts as to train the mind. Teaching
facts of history, geography, astronomy or
what not, is but picking up pebbles from the
ground-the material universe is too vast to
be taken in by any mind-and to attempt to
give anybody a complete education is too ah-
surd to be seriously considered. The schools
ought to be like a steel mill that turns out
fnely-tzmpered steel blooms. 1t were mani
fest folly for the mill men to reduce their out
put to watch springs, though in this shape
they would be worth hundreds of dollars per
pound. Some Of it, and very much more of
it, must be made into steel rails, that sell at
1913 per ton. Let the schools hammer and
temper this mass of human steel, and not
attempt to fashion it to the uttermost. Some
of it will 60 into professions, some into art, but
much more of it must, of necessity, 60 into
the world of labor. The rolling-mills will
take some, the machine shops some; the
foundries and mills must be manned with
men who understand the business.
The demand of the world is and ever must