The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1888-05-05
4 POWERFUL ARGUMENT.
An Educational Journals Able Comments
on Newspapers and Schools.

An Educational Journals Able Comments
on Newspapers and Schools.
No charge is more uersistently made
by portion of tho daily press than
the impeachment of the public school
system, ms awakening great expccta-
tions in ordinary American children
which can never bc realized. "Thc
public schools turn out the boys with
extravagant aspirations for piofession-
al and public life, and the girls fred
with longing for elegant life upstairs,
! or genteel work In some of the attrac-
tive new callings open to women. No
public school graduate willingly comes
down to manual labor, and nobody de-
sires to be common person." Some
of the over-zealous advocates of manual
training in public education appear to
be largely influenced by this consdera-
ton, and urge industrial education, rs
one eminent advocate puts it, on the
ground that, thus modified, the com
mon schools may be good for some
thing for common people. But in no
region of American life is there so
little of this unhealthy expectation.
either inculcated or encouraged, rs in
the better class of our public schools.
| If the teacher Is n true American he
will impress on boys and girls the fact
that American citizenship the noblest
heritage of opportunity and response
bility. Beyond this we believe there
| is no real basis for the charge above
mentioned. But in several ways the
press itself, with all it's unquestionable
merits, does work the very demorali-
zation spoken of, blythe present meth
ods of journalism. One intolorable
nuisance is the growing habit of mag
nifying the social standing of multi
tudcs of excitable young people in the
foolish "society column where the
dress, the style, the most in
significant doings and ordinary
movements of many common
place youth are seriously put forth as
matters of social Importance; of course
initiating said youngsters with an alb
surd sense of their own magniiicence.
Another more serious offense is the
magnifying of the scmi-criminal lower
strata of the community where crime
is chiefly bred, by long descriptions
and elaborate record of such of the
number rs actually get before the
courts. Thousands of people of whom
u well-ordered community knows
nothing in their ordinary condition are
thus galvanized into disgusting or
hideous notoriety, and the impression
goes abroad that vice and crime are
rife among the respectable classes.
Another great stimulant to imaginative
children is found in the detailed de-
scriptions of high life, boundless wealth
and marvellous changes of fortune, in
the current fiction and the "corres.
pondence columns" of the great jour.
nails. Anybody that can push facile
pen can write up any thing; all the
better if he knows little or nothing
valuable about it. But, somehow, the
boys and girls who hang over the be-
witching description get the idea that
to see, enjoy, and be all this is "as
easy as preaching" 1t is unfortunate
that great many ''ready writers" fol
the press. even great lights of litera
ture. have never enjoyed school dis
cipline sufficiently thorough to learr
that nothing brings down tlighty Cir
or reduces the "big head' in self
sufficient boy like solid course O
study, with the accompanying training
in character, habits, and manners tha
is found nowhere better than in u goot
public school. .-Education