The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-05-21
Palmam Qui Merritt, Feras.

3uk A
The rejection by superintendent Sny-
der of the SIS offered by the Woman's
Club for a prize for the best essay on
woman to be written by a member OF
the High School graduating class, brings
into acute notice a peculiar notion which
is generally held by educators" of the
new school. This was well summarized
in 4The News" yesterday in these words:
Children should be taught to learn for
the love of the task. and without Hiarhs
or prizes of any kind.
We have no hesitation in saying that
this is nonsense. 1t is mere sublimated
humbug, utterly at variance with COM
mon sense and human nature. 1t is un-
educational in its effect, or, if educa-
tional, it is so along false and unnatural
lines.
We are sorry to say this Of an opinion
held by Mr.. Snyder, because we hold him
and his work in general in the highest
possible esteem. We consider that his
services to the city's schools are inval-
liable. and we recognize in him an adj
vanced student of ~pedagogics. But in
this matter he is the victim of an cpl
demic condition of fad. He is neither
better nor worse off than the vast ma
jority of his professional brethren, or
even than a considerable section of the
public.
But it is the rule of life that all effort
is directed to concrete success, and that
success can take in the mind no form
save that of a reward. In the eye OF
the saint it may be Heaven; in the eye
of the sinner, the joys of Vanity Fair.
One man may work for Low and another
for a million. Truth to the scientist
means a professorship and a string of
letters to his name, and the soldier is
looking for his sword of honor
The festaI blazes, the triumphal show,
The rayish'd standard, and the captive
foe.
TIT senate's thanks, the Gazette's pomp-
Gus tale,
with force resistless DER the brave pre-
vail.
For such the steady Romans shook the
world:
And stain with blood the Danube Or the
Rhine.
This power has praise that virtue scarce
Till fame supplies the universal charm.
The world has not changed since the
days of Juvenal or those of DR.. johnson,
and the world of childhood is simply the
world of men and women on a smaller
but perhaps a more intense scale.
The successful conquest of algebra and
Latin syntax to the young combatants
of the High School can best be made
| significant BY such recognitions of merit
as the Woman's Club proposed. The re-
| fusal to offer them is to undertake the
| elimination Of the human element from
| the motives to industry, to substitute
| something s-uperhuman, cultivated for the
| impulses of nature. Carried to its legiti-
| mate and logical limits, it would abolish
| all praise or commentator and throw
the pupil back upon his own internal
consciousness and upon a premature wis
dom for his only encouragements to
progress.
Some of the scientific efforts which are
made in our day to divert the deep and
relentless current of human tendency
into new and artificial channels are at
once sad and ludicrous to contemplate
sad in their futilSty, ludicrous in their
impossibility. The ~strangest thing
about them is that the advocates Of
change are blind to the one certain fact
Of alI-that it was under the old condi-
tons that the world did all that it has
done.
Bygone ages may have been inferior tc
us in some respects in analytical power.
But they had one advantage-their in
stinctive appreciation of and reliance
upon Unborn human desires and needs
It would be well if the wheels Of progress
would 90 a little slowly for a while. \
would be well for us to pause and ask
ourselves if the wisdom Of the ages is al.
together cou~nterbalanced by the theories
Of a generation.
TT is q long way from Or. Johnson tt
.tba Bouffes Parisiennes; but the eontro.