Morning journal and courier., 1890-09-15
COMMUNICATIONS.
The Board Of Education

To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER: Knowing from past experience that you are always ready and willing to elucidate q knotty problem for the benefit of your great army of readers, I have taken the liberty of propounding the following ques- tion:
 What is our school board elected for. Is it for the purpose of enabling its mem bers to air their personal spite and party grievances one against the other, as at present seems the case! If so, I and many other parents would like to know and so act accordingly for the protection of our children. But as I am of the.opinion that | the duties of the school board are strictly to net as the executive of the grand and in other words, to provide for the educa- tion of our children. I would suggest that they now cease pickering and realize that the time has arrived when the business of our public schools is to produce men rather than scholars and so direct l their educational efforts toward the requirements of the future rather than continue to be governed by the traditions of the past, as seems to be the policy of | the present board. In fact,it is time that the board understood that the teaching and training must be designedly prepara- tory to those of the workshop, the ware house and the office and if our future progress is to be at all worthy of our be- ginning the moral and intellectual dignity of industry must be formally acknowl- edged and systematically sustained and advanced, fully conscious of the fact that the mechanic of to-day will be the super intendent of the labor-saving machinery of tomorrow Furthermore, it would seem that our board of education should be composed of men sufficiently broad l..inded to know that improved educa, tional facilities are greatly needed and must be procured at once if we are to keep up with the times, but not necessarily at the expense of the primary schools, as at present seems to be the favorite idea There should be ample facility for seating every child of school age before one cent is in vested in any addition to our high school I read the report of the president of tn, board, in which he stated the time wa' near when additional high school facilities would be needed, and the same day m, child was sent home from the primary school because it was full. In fact, i seems to me that the system of primar. education is carried on as matter of ex pediency rather than principle, as durin! the past four years my chilt has been transferred to thre
 different schools and is now in the highes class of an ungraded school, awaitinl l transferal to some other.
 This is not as it should be. Our law , provide for full suit of educations U clothes for every child, and until ever child has been provided with one no none B should be spent for ornamental trimming
 and gold lace.
 And in conclusion would say if our schoo 5 board cannot do better, or at least hay
 some relization of the magnitude and grea
 importance of their official positions tha they have lately shown, it would be bette . for them to resign in body and not COT t tinue to insult an intelligent communit
 by further display of pot house politics WILLIAM G. CUNNING