Jamestown weekly alert. [volume] (Jamestown, Stutsman County, D.T. [N.D.]) 1882-1925, 1892-09-01
UNIFORM TEXT BOOKS.
A Hint to the Incoming Legis-
IatorS Upon a Matter OF
Importance.
jamestown Ladies Organize a
Worlds Fair Auxiliary
Tuesday.
Grain Not Injured by the Light
Frost of Last Monday
Night.

Editor Alert:--Permit me space in
your valuable paper for suggestion or
two relative to great want OF our
country schools. I refer to uniformity
Of text books.
Our present admirable school law has
been in force four years and in most
essentials supplies we'll the needs of the
schools. Two years ago bill providing
free text books was introduced into the
legislature and received some considera-
ton at the hands of law makers but
failed to pass. Had this bill become a
law uniformity of text books in the
schools of the state would of course have
followed and much valuable time been
saved.
Without stopping now to discuss the
merits of the free text book plan, further
than to express the hope that it may
come again, and with more friends
another time; it seems desirable that
something should be done at once to
prevent the useless waste of time and
energy on the part of teachers, and loss
to the school resulting from the almost
interminable number of text books now
used.
AS matters are now there are no
authorized books for country pupils to
purchase.
Parents provide their children with
what they may have in the house or buy
what they think best, or what may be
ordered by the teacher.
Not lnfrequently books fifty years
behind the times are considered all that
is necessary. May come from Norway or
Mozambique. If only in the English
language-be Bancroft's or Redpath's,
or Longstreet's history OF the Conted-
eracy.
l have in my mind a school of fourteen
pupils where eight different kinds of
arthmetics. four different readers, three
spoilers, four different kinds o: geogra-
phies, two text books on physiology, two
on history and three grammars are in
Misunderstanding forty-one daily reel
tations.
l need not suggest that the best efforts
Of this teacher are largely thrown away,
or that no economical classification of
pupils can be had under such conditions.
What Is true Of this school IS doubtless,
more or less true of every county school
in the state.
1t is not too much to say that in every
school numbering twenty scholars one
third of the teachers time, and hence
one-third of the districts money is
thrown away by this oversight of the
present law.
It costs no more for all children OF
equal advancement to have the same
books. and the best that the state can
give, than for all children to have differ
ent books supplied by individual whim.
The law provides for "course Of
study" and ultimately looks to the grad
ing of the schools, but there can be no
course of study and no grading of the
schools without uniformity of books.
Iffree text books to the schools OF the
state is consumation too expensive to be
thought of (and the writer believes other
wise) the state can at least furnish su-
perior books through uniformity. Ger.
tainly competent board to select proper
books, and law to enforce their use
should give us better books, and better
results in teaching, than the present
free to all, 60 as you please methods
long since discarded by other states.
Let the next legislature see to it that
somebody authorize the school books of
the state, care only being taken that the
best books at minimum cost. and for
term of years, be furnished to pupils.
G.. NJ. L.
Pingree, Aug 25, 1892.