The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1894-12-19
School Legislation.

The schools were fruitful subject
of legislation at the late session of the
general assembly. Some of the laws
enacted were good, some ba |, some in
different, and some positively injurious.
One law was twice enacted and twice
approved by the executive, identical in
phraseology, with the exception of the
number of weeks of school in each
year. The first, approved November
9, provides for twenty-six weeks of
school and instruction in certain spec-
fed studies. The second, appr oved
November 20, requires the towns to
maintain twenty-eight weeks of school,
and in all other respects is duplicate
of the first. The last enacted law is
assumed to express the will of the law
makers. 1t is singular circumstance
that the second measure ran the gaunt-
let of all the law.making powers with.
out discovery, or, if it were the
maturely considered purpose of the
legislature to add two weeks to the
yearly period of schooling, this round
Robin-Hood's-b way of doing the
thing was necessary.
An exceedingly foolish and injurious
law is that giving certificates to teach,
without special examination, to gradu-
ates of colleges, academies, seminaries,
graded schools, ETC., whose course of
study is approved by the superintendent
of education. The legislature nigh. as
we'll have repealed the law requiring
examinations, and thrown open the
school houses Unfortunately to every
seeker of comfortable job in summer,
fall or winter. In the professions Of
law, medicine or theology, and in many
departments of business, the entry of
new applicants for their honors or
emoluments must stop at the threshold
till they have answered satisfactorily
the sentinel's challenge. The law
student, because he has read law with
Esquire Brief, or studied at a law
school, the youth with an eye to m edi-
cine, or preaching the gospel, or run
ming locomotive or steamship, or
in any department of electri-
cal science, must win his open-sesame
from the hands of picked examiners;
but into the profession that should lead
all others, practitioners are admitted
on the assumption that because they
have rubbed up against college or
some other place where the knowledge
that is power is supposed to be gained,
they have therefore carried off enough
of learning to make them competent
teachers of youth.
The incompetency of many who es-
say to teach is the bane of school in
struction in all rural communities.
Under the best system of examination,
the percentage of incompetency will be
all too large. Under the new dispen-
sation, insufficiency of even ordinary
qualification is likely to be the rule, and
wv iNfSt'O IhO NAS' pViOh' OtuuChlo
from country schools, going to schools
in which rational process of selecting
instructors is practiced, discover that
they have suffered from the defects of
preliminary drill and bemoan its con-
sequences. While it is passing strange
that the legislature, especially the up
per branch, should have given its sane
ton to so injurious law, it is matter
of congratulation that another retro
grade movement, the return to the dis
trict syste n, was defeated in that body
the greater the pity that it should
have neutralized the eff of so good
deed with the evils of one so entirely
bad. Good laws are those providing
for the instruction of pupils in the
higher English branches, and requiring
towns of $500 inhabitants to provide