St. Paul daily globe., 1893-12-01
"A CALAMITY AVEkTED.

CALAMITY AV EkTED.
When the state normal schools came
to the legislature at its last sessi on, ask
ing for increased appropriations. the
GLOBE felt itself obliged to question their
claim and to intimate that they had not
justified the expenditures already made
by the quantity or the quality of their
work. But whatever we may have
thought then of the disproportion
of cost to result. we are now
obliged by the recent action of
the faculty Or board of governors or
who or Whatever sits in the chair
of supreme control of the Winona Nor
NAL school to admit that that one action
places to the credit side of the normal
account SO large sum of public benefit
as to transfer the balance decidedly to
the benefit side of the account.
1t often occurs in the lives Of men and
sometimes in that of nations, that one
single merltorious act stands out so con-
SpicuouSly as to overshadow multitude
of shortcomings or defects and to op-
crate as redemptionary fund for them
all. Every schoolboy knows how that
awkward, uDbeautiful bird with a voice
eacophonous and the greeting sibilOus,
redeemed its kind for all time from con-
tumely by waking the sleeping guards
of Rome with their discordant Squawks
in time to repel the Stealthy attack of
the Gauls upon the citadel, so that
every goose since that eyentful night
has been able to meet all taunts with
the quiet and dignified remark that it
was geese that saved Rome.
Some thirty or forty of the young men
who are getting preparatory drill in
the art pedagogic in the Winona normal
had SO far forgotten the attributes and
insignia of manhood as to have actually
parted their hair in the middle of their
foreheads instead of upon the orthodox
lett side, or, ignoring the partings en-
tirely, instead of giving their hair the
alert and pugnacious roach. Not only
was this a departure from the conven-
tional, but it was so evidently an ele-
vation of the hair to a claim TO the at
tentlon of the student as to completely
reverse the concept of the ideal student,
to whom his hair was only in condition
shOlastic when it was treated to no other
dressing than that which got from his
fingers and the dallying breezes. From
the student with flowing locks lying in
negligee about his thoughtful brow and
sweeping unshorn down his neck, to the
prim and precise student who parted
his carefully trimmed hair with nice
in, ,ieh I,
was departure so wide and so rad
ical, so serious in its consequences both
to the embryotic pedagogue and to the
state. that the faculty could not do other
wise, as wise and prudent guardians Of
the welfare, not ouly of the students in
their charge, but of the youth of the
state to whom their pupils would soon
go as eXemplars of morals and manners,
than to set their faces sternly and mex
orably against this dangerous innova-
ton.
Teachers know better than the un-
read mass the lessons history teaches
US. They know that the great nations
Of history, those which won fame as
warriors, as we'll as those which won
renoWn ID the gentler arts, sank gradu-
ally into effeminacy and thence into in
evitable decay. They know better
than all others how necessary it is, then,
to guard our young men against all,
even the slightest approaches of wom-
anliness, II the manliness of men, and
through that the nation, Is to be pre-
served. It is not to be wondered at, 1t
is not to be condemned then, but it is to
be most warmly commended, that,
when the teachers of the Normal saw
the possible teachers of the commoner
schools abjuring that parting of their
hair which is the traditional indication
of manhood, and adopting that middle
parting which is the equally tradition
ary sign of the gentler sex, they were
quick to take alarm and prompt and
stern in sqnelching the incipient deca-
dence. They passed speedily from in
effective remonstrance to an ultimatum
Of return to the orthodox parting or
their homes. and the young men chose
the former alternative, and thus the
state was saved.
When we contemplate the possibili-
ties flowing from this innovation If left
unchecked, we gather appreciation of
the enormous benefit to the state of this
vigorous action of the Winona Normal
authorities, and the justification, on
broad public grounds, of their action.
Here are forty young men who will soon
go out into the village schools of the
state, where they will be the models to
couple hundred boys each. We all
know how children imbibe the manner
isms of their teachers. Initiating tn cir
speech, dress and catching their oddi-
ties Of manner. Like preacher like
parish' is no Nuer than like teacher
like scholars. The middle parting of
the hair would have thus spread like a
contaglon. The village boy, as soon as
his stature warrants it, becomes the
teacher of the country school, and thus
this effeminate habit " ould have spread
to the remotest sections of the state,
and the farmer boys would be going to
the seeding and the harvest with their
locks pendent on either side of the sim
cipital of a line.
The students might urge that present
actions are to be judged by present con-
ditions, and that reprisal is law of
human nature. With the invasion of
the bangs and the frizzes women have
abandoned the traditional insignia of
their sex, and abandonment by the own