The herald., 1895-04-11
HUTCHINSON STILL KICKING
This Time 1t Is About the
Teachers Institute
THEY COST $3.50 AN HOUR
The Expense of Some Interesting Learned
Stories About Frogs
A carlyIcan Puncturing Of What the Writer
Believes to Be In Need of
Drastic Reform

season to make q few remarks concerning
schools and teachers, and Institutes and
teachers associations.
In the last three months no less than
half a dozen teachers Institutes and con-
ventions have been held in this city, and
two more are to be held hero during the
next two weeks.
While so much time and money are be-
ing spent in this way, it might be well
for the general public to know something
about it and for teachers in general to
consider seriously what it is all for.
About three hundred teachers will meet
in this city during the early part of the
week beginning with April 10.
The general public does not know that
the scintillations, coruscations, Ticker
ings, glimmerings and frequent dazzling
effulgence of the luminaries that brighten
up the pedagogical gatherings aforemen-
toned cost the county no less than $1,000
for the four days illumination, or that
the cost will be the same whether any
darkness is dissipated or not.
Every teacher in this county outside ot
Los Angeles city must dismiss his school
during institute week, in order to be
present to catch the words of wisdom
that are supposed to be very numerous at
such gathering as an institute.
The schools must be closed and the
salaries must go on. With something
salary OF $21 or $22 a week, and incidental
expenses in the way of salaries for lectur-
ers, 1T is not difficult to see what becomes
of $1,000 in good tax money.
Allowing five hours a day for four days
gives twenty hours for institute work.
That means that we pay $3.50 an hour
and keep 10, 600 children out of school to
hear every lecturer Talk that costs at
that fearful rate should be marvelously
rich in instruction.
AS matter of fact, the majority Of
lecturers must of necessity retail their
lectures to Institutes in all parts of the
country. | have computed that one man
who used to come out from Boston every
year to tell us frog stories and other in
spiring things has been the means of en-
abling the taxpayers of this state to dis
pose of more than 500, 600, and has put
in valuable hours for 5000 teachers, while
100000 children missed a week of school.
If we, as teachers, are not ready to do
away with these formal institutes, we
should devise some means of making
them instructive. Some good is usually
derived from the section work and free
discussions OF the morning sessions.
That most teachers need instruction is
true; that very little instruction is ever
given at an institute is also true.
The majority of the people think that
teachers attend institutes to receive in
struction and that they must be exam
during many of the forenoon sessions and
all of the afternoon sessions dozens of
the best teachers in the country are
quietly reading books or papers or maga-
zines to put in the time without ennui.
They do not know that the teachers who
are almost daily reminded that they
must not talk or ''lecture" so much in
school are herded together for one week
toward the close of each school year-to
listen to some one who is overburdened
with knowledge of how the closing year, s
work should have been done.
Just why institutes have never been
made working schools for teachers has
never been determined. 1t would cost no
more to teach the teachers thoroughly
something in which they are deficient,
than to lecture them to death about how
to teach what they do not know, or to
to gain power and breadth and culture
by successfully dodging the inquirer
after knowledge and pretending tn be
deeply versed in matters OF which they
are profoundly ignorant.
1t is now quite fashionable, pedagogic
ally speaking, to clamor for English and
condemn technical grammar. The proof
1T pudding heads of that sort is not so
MUCH in their malevolence as in their
maleloquence.
would suggest that at least one-half of
the time of each institute might be de-
NOteu u real lcClllllCdl lHSlTuCblOllJ bldb
but one or two branches should be studied
at each institute, and that English gram
mar might be studied with some profit at
the next session.
have noticed that learning, like the
companionship of soulful human beings
brings respect rather than contempt, for
what is known familiarly. We are too
prone to boast of our education as soon
as we can read coarse print and words of
one syllable without serious difficulty.
1t is natural for lecturers ana teachers
to teach much better from the institute
platform than in any school room in the
world. Thousands of airy methods are
there enlarged upon that are never heard
of anywhere else: for which latter We
should be thankful. [ protest against
this constant prating about methods. No
human being ever knew solitary thing
he did not learn. No one can teach for
another any more than he can live for him
or love for him or know for him or die
for him.
The teacher who is recognized as an in
dvidual is thing of the past-and the
future. At present he has about as much
to do with our schools as a modern solo
ist has to do in solo. Did the gentle
reader ever notice that when the aspiring
and happy soloist opens his mouth to
sing the entire chorus cannot resist the
temptation to yawp till the soloist is COM
PEELED to give up in despair and remain
silent?
The same vocaliferous tendency is no.
ticed in the balance of mankind whenever
teacher is employed to teach a school.
The only person who enters the school
room twice in a season to see the children
is supposed to be incapable, and more
safeguards are placed about him than if
he were an escaped convict under sur
veillance.
This prattle about most learned people
being incapable of 'imparting' their
knowledge is childish. How did you
know they were learned if they could not
prova it by imparting something?
III | had dozen children 1 would
choose for their teacher IL man with some
information of the brain" and would
not object to modicum of brains and
some will power.
| sigh for the days when schools and
colleges will not prate about $50 many
weeks in Latin aud so many weeks in al
zebra as something definite, like
term of punishment for crime.
notice by this mornings Herald that
our friend Non-Sectaran has tangled his
Imagination all up over the Bible dis
cussion of last week.
Non-Sectarian does not seem to know
that nobody was idiotic enough to object
to the teachings of the ten COMMITMENTS
and all other principles of life and moral.
Try in the public schools. was the only
one who fought openly against the use OF
schools, yet | would add much that
H. rl.s.s