St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-12-10
UNGRADE THE SCHOOLS.

II am discouraged and In despair,
said teacher in one of our grammar
schools. Zone of the brightest scholars
/. in my room is German boy of twelve,
to whom our spelling is a stumbling
block which he can neither get over or
around. In every other study he is eX-
cellent, but because he is deficient IN
orthography / can't advance him to the
upper grades. have already kept him
back one year, and it seems like crime
to keep him back longer, but there is
the rule, and l don't know what to do"
In this statement, one which every.
teacher in any graded school in the
state can parallel in Ills or her own ex-
perience, this teacher draws one more
count in the indictment against the
present system of grades. We stated
the first count in recent editorial. in
which we spoke of the enormous waste
of teachers energies and pupils oppor-
tunitieS which the system involves, and
which is irremediable as long as it is
maintained. In this count we have a
clear picture of the injury the system
infiictS OH the pupils themselves, and
how this exaltation of method has re-
suited in losing sight of the only object
for which the system was designed. In
stead of aiding, it defeats education. 1t
deprlveS the youth of what education
really and only consists, the develop
ment of the stronger faculties of his
mind. in the useless effort to develop
qualities that are either dormant or
capable of but slight development.
We can measure the magnitude of the
injury done when we reflect that prof.
ably less proportion than one in hum
dred of the children who enter the
primary rooms graduates from the
eighth grade. Not one in two hundred
OF them passes through the high school.
This is inevitable because of the poverty
of the parents, which compelS them TO
put the children at renunerative en-
ployment as soon as possible. so that
their little earnings may help to make
income equal outgo and keep the wolf
from the door. With this appalling fact
i'll view, every educational effort should
bend towards giving to the pupils OF the
grammar schools every possible oppor-
tunity for improvement, not of fixed
set of faculties, but of those in which
each is best endowed. Nothing should
be permitted to stand in the way of this;
neither the prejudice nor the pride nor
the laziness Of teachers; nor, least of all,
any mechanical arrangement of studies
and classes.
Parents feel that something is some
where wrong with the schools; that the
children do not make the progress in
scholarship which they should. They
vote supplies willingly; they contribute
to the building of better school houses,
and with better equipment and supplied
with modern Improvements" they look
with hopefulneSs on each new tad
whose Introduction the children report,
thinking it may be the answer to their
question; but those of them who had
the good fortune to get some of their
schooling in the country district schools
feel that, for causes they cannot COM
prehend, the graded schools are not
equal in results to their more modest
country cousins. Teachers themselves,
with occasional exceptions, grow up to
their work through the grades of the
schools, and blindly accept the system
as the best and only one without ques-
ton, not seeing its evil effects both on
the scholar and on themselves. They
do not perceive that they are getting to
be not teachers. but specialists; that
they are to The finished pupil precisely
what the people who make the different
parts of the shoe are to the finished
shoe. The man who shapes the heel,
or he who sews the sole on and does
nothing else, is just as completely
shoemaker as the person who teaches
to a young procession of scholars the
studies OF one or two grades of a gram
mar school is teacher, and no more.
We feel deeply that this is matter
that concerns parents and pupils, and
not whit less the teachers themselves,
and that earnest thought should be
given to the whole question with view
to the displacement of the graded sys-
tenn with one which will unite the
elasticity and economy of time and
energy of the district school with the
advantages of longer terms, better
teachers and better equipment of the
city schools. We are glad to note that
some Eastern educational journals are
doing this, for it only needs to have the
attention OF the public directed to the
evils to produce change which will be
either an evolution or revolution.