The Forrest City times., 1892-01-22
Public Schools.

Intelligence and virtue are the foundation and corner stone of our American republic, Ignorance and vice are it's most formidable foes. Whatever may be the decision of other nations, we as American people are shut up to the necessity of popular ed ucation. As a community, as state, as a nation must we look to the public school for the moulding of the charac- ter of our boys and girls. The youth must be taught to cultivate such habits as will make him master of himself enable him, even when pressed by fierce temptation, to prefer loss, dis grace aud death itself to dishonor. The public school excels all other agencies that has to deal with human natuse, for it takes the child at that tender age when impressions are most susceptible. As you mould the char acter in childhood, so it will remain through life. No one has right to fold his arms and be independent of the school in his locality. The educa- tion of his boy or girl is vastly more important than any thing else. If parents would take more interest in their children, it would be greater pleasure for the children to try to make them happy. The teacher and pupils do not receive the encourage ment from parents that they ought. As a rule, the children are started to school in the fall and no further at tention is given to them by way of en- couragement and help during the en- tire school term. The teacher is placed in the schoolroom and is left to do his work right or wrong, or to neg feet it entirely, and it is all the same to the parents. They do not visit the school to see what progress is being made, but take it for granted that all is right. Such ought not to be. Our schools should occupy the first place in our minds, and should be a combined effort upon the part of both parent and teacher to do the greatest good to the greatest number.
 True our schools are oftentimes too much like machines. We are wrapped up in a system, rather than in what that system is to accomplish. If human nature were d fixed quantity, if any two children were alike, or any where nearly alike, if an act done for any child always brought forth the same result, then it might be possible to form an absolute system of peda- gogy. But such is not the case. and any system is faulty in which teacher must work exclusively by any card other than good common sense. The grading of schools is important, but when gigantic machines are run upon the plan that the grades must be main- tained no matter what becomes of the graded, evil, rather than good is the result.
 . Education is preparation for the real duties of life, and no greater mis- take is made than to hold out gradua- tion as the chief end and aim to be reached. There are many schools that graduate class every year with good clothes and pretty speeches, and send forth to battle with the world those who have been ground through the machine, armed with nothing save a diploma, signed by the board and tied up with blue ribbon. Such schools have been working purely from self ish motive, and have lost sight of the grandest thing in all the world, the in- dividual soul.
 It is not money, nor governments, nor machines, that are the greatest value in this latter day. It is charac- ter, Individuality, men. To these all forces are subservient. For these Christ died *.*