Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-03-27
THE GRADUATION SEASON.

The period is near at hand when the
sweet girl graduates" and the budding
promises of Aanhood will be occupying
the school, az ademic and college rostrums,
and testifyipg to the world what they
know. For years there has been public
demand that the directors of educational
Institutions should introduce radical re-
forms in school compositions and ESSAYS.
What is wanted, is to get the boys and
girls down out of the clouds of fancy and
self-inportance, to a reasonably practical
plane. Instead of these annual efforts be-
ing devoted to hounderings in philosoph-
zeal depths, and plungings in the quag-
mires of speculations upon life, its duties
and its burdens, the lads and misses should
be required to write and speak of things of
which they have had experience. Absence
of the ornate in style is better than the
floating in the cloud ether, in which the
graduate usually INDUCES. 1t will be a
better test of the intellectual quality of the
boys and girls to hear them treat of
homely things. These need by no means
limit fancy, or clip the wings of magma
ton. The youth who writes of his impress
sions of thenprld about him, will give his
nearer the better opportunity to Judge of
his capacity to grapple with the world and
wiring from it living" If we could
have our way, it should be an intellectual
felony for school graduate to write upon
such subjects as "I.ife," "The Ideal in
Art The Soul and It's Aspirations" etc
There should be by teachers constant
frowning down of literary dilettanteism
They ought to insist that boys and girls
write as boys and girls, and of those things
of everyday fact with which they are IA
miliar and which lie closer than other
things TO their hearts. They should write
OF that they like best, see most, and hope
for with the intensest longing. Out of the
fulIness of their fresh hearts they should
speak. Above all, they should, in these
public exercises, give some evidence of the
power, cultivation and development of the
observant quality. They should he
taught to see, and when they write,
to write of what they saw. The
! truly observant man is the one who
not only sees, but remembers and
thinks about it. The academic or
school pupil who walks half mile in
town or in country, and returns to the
starting paint without having seen or ex-
perienced anything worthy of thought or
suggesting thought, or without having
seen anything that teaches, or awakens
inquiry and sets on edge some one of his
| faculties, is in bad training. Self-comun-
/ ing, introspection, is wise and useful, Tut
I the boy or girl who uses the physi, al
senses to learn as he or she moves is most
likely to grasp the world by the shoulders
and make it do service to his or her life.
: There is such thing as going through life
with the eyes tightly studiously closed.
Whenever child manifests disposition
so to walk, it needs q corrective at once.
The cultivation of the observant powers
stimulates every other mental power, and
stores the mind with Unreasonable knowl-
edge. School faculties should make it a
point to reject, every thesis that is in the
slightest degree toploftical There is
enough in the bounding reality of gener-
Gus, joyful, hopeful and buoyant youth to
engage the best years of young life Ro-
nance will he intertwined with il suffi-
GENTLY the speculative will be amply
developed without the whip and spur OF
the teacher. There is the least danger OF
grovelling and cropping in the ashes of the
too practical. When that disposition is
unfortunately manifested, it is time enough