Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1888-06-22
A PLAIN TALK ABOUT SCHOOLS
AND COLLEGES.

EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION, HELD AT GLADE
SPRING. VA, MAY 18th, 1888.
[From the Richmond Religious Herald
If half the breath spent in talk
ing down our free school system had been
spent in talking it up-if half the efforts put
forth to make it failure had been used in
making it success, our old State would
to-day stand nearer to the head of the col
umn of States in the matter of general ed
ucation than she now stands.
Too often mistakes have been made in
the appointment of superintendent and
school trustees, and that has led to even
worse mistakes as to the appointment of
teachers in such schools. Too often the
appointment of teacher has been decided
more by his or her kinship to trustee, or
to one of the trustees poor kin, than by
his OF her personal fitness for the place.
The teacher gets the place and the pay,
and the scholar lives and dies in the most
profound ignorance of the things for which
the tax payer paid his school tax. The
taxpayer sees that, and he becomes the
enemy of the system which his own hard
earned wages is fostering. If he and all
concerned had given a little time and eff
fort to having the right man appointed
county superintendent, and then helped
him to look out the best men in the coun-
ty to act as school trustees, it would not
be possible for an unworthy applicant to
secure, or hold for any considerable time,
the position of teacher. The greatest care
should be given to securing proper super
intendents and trustees, and every tax
payer, and all other good citizens, should
spare no labor to effect such result. You
have the whole matter in your own hands,
and if your public school is failure, the
fault is your own.
But incompetent trustees and teachers
are, unhapplly, to be found in connection
with other schools besides the much abused
public school. Everywhere, throughout
all our plans for educating, in the private
school, the academy, the College, the Uni
Neutrality-suspicious., there is abundant
need for improvement.
The man who will not give time and
toll to his trusteeship. and who will not
shoulder responsibility and do all in his
power to put out an incompetent incum-
bent, is not the man foc a school or college
trustee. One may be very amiable and
good and yet simply good for nothing as
a teacher. Like the poet, the teacher is
born and not made. A man may have
graduated at all the Universities in Chris
tendon. and yet be uusuited to any place
in any school in the Commonwealth. He
may not know how to impart to others
what he knows; or he may be a crooked
stick, or crank, or hobby-rider. There
are born teachers, and they should be
searched out and pressed into the work for
which God sent them into the world.
Too much that is called teaching serves
only to prove that the teacher is in pro-
found ignorance of the duties of his great
calling. 1t is because they do not know
how to teach, that SO many who do profess
to teach do little else than torture and tor
ment their pupils about the ''exact words
of our author" The ''exact word" that
ought to be given all such teachers is a
command to make their living in soma
other way Of course, the memory should
be cultivated, but the practice of making
pupils memorize everything is an abomina-
ton against which [ beg every one of you
to raise vehement protest.
One of the greatest evils which affiicts
our country to-day, is that now bring be-
fore YOU The boards of trustees and the
faculties of our schools and colleges need
to be sifted. There are scores of names
upon the lists of trustees of colleges and
academies who have never given to the in
situations which they control money
enough to pay for the ink which is used in
printing their names on the catalogue in
which they appear, and they do as much
for the finances of their respective schools
as they do in any other way for them.
They are mere ciphers, and worse than CT
pliers. for they keep out men who might
do the work, if they would step down and
out. They ought never to have been ap-
pointed to any such trust.
Many and marvellous are the discoveries
which this progressive age has made. New
suns and new stars have been found, but
no one has found a way in which to weed
out from our college faculties men and
women who could do no more brilliant
and magnificent thing than write first
class resignation and hand it in. But
while they have thoughts and dreams
about everything else, never by day or
night do they dream of rendering this great
and much needed service to God and man.
while the boards of visitors sit around,
without backbone, and discuss with
ever-growing interest the question, how is
it that while so many people in other de-
partments of business die or resign, moth
ing of the kind occurs here?
In biography Of Thomas Arnold we are
| told that, intellectually as well as moral
ly, he felt that the teacher ought himself
| to be perpetually learning, and constantly
| keep above the level of his scholars. For
this reason Mr.. Arnold maintained that no
| schoolmaster ought to remain at his post
| much more than fourteen or fifteen years,
| lest by that time he should have fallen be-
| hind the scholarship of the age. By his
| own reading and literary works he endea-
| vored constantly to act upon this principle
| himself" (Carlisle's Memoir of Thomas
| Arnold, page 1857 That is the way it
looked to the principal of the Rugby school.
| He considered the position of a teacher
| one of the most important that any man
can hold in this world. Hence he thought
| that one should give himself to it with a
| zeal and ardor which must ensure his con-
slant progress in his epartment-indeed
in all departments of learning.
y X
If our academies and colleges and uni
| versities all over the country are to do the
| much needed work for which they have
| been called into existence, these matters
| must have more attention from the leaders
of thought among us. There must be great
| changes in our plans and methods and
there must be some unloading. The man
who cares nothing about the school except
to draw his salary from it, must BE permit.
ted to butter his bread in some other way,
and in his place must be put the man whose
zeal for the cause of education will glow
and blaze like that of martyrs who GO
! shouting to the stake. Such man as
that will find many things he can do for
his school besides the hours he spends in
the classroom He will be man of the
people, and they will hear him when he
speaks and read him when he writes, and
he will use his voice and his pen. There
are some schools in the South which illus
trate how ready the masses are to respond
to the call of the educator when he knows
how to make that call. The common PEG,
pie will heed the missionary teacher of to.
day as in other days they heard gladly the
greatest of all teachers.
| MODEL Address REFORE SWEET