The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-26

DIR. e. A. SMYTHE,
$50 Stevenson Building, Sth Floor.

and Morals" such instruction should be
given daily to the pupils of all the grades
as Will foster a spirit of kindness and
courtesy towards each other. feeling of
respect towards parent and teacher, and a
love of cleanliness, order law and truth.
And manners as one meets them in the
public schools are generally so notably good
that one wonders how it can be that the
manners that one meets in public convey
ances and other public places are apt to
be so notably bad.
Il often wonder at the manners of our
scholars, says another principal. Com
sidering the class from which the majority
of them come and their home surround
ings, | think ii is indeed remarkable. I
never have to tell a child how to address
me, or otherwise behave to me. They do
if. and they do it just right There is q
great deal in the worst of them on which
to build"
In morals the young Russian and Polish
Jews furnish forth a less favorable report.
I'm that respect says the East-side prin-
cipal already quoted, you have to keep a
sharp eye on them. For instance they are
thievish. j know that l have little pick
pockets here before me. But strange to say,
we never miss anything. But then, too, we
guard against 1t. There are scissors, for in
stance; fearful temptation, of course.
over here in the sweat-shop district. al
ways give them out personally, and with a
good deal of form at the beginning of the
term. / take the scissors into the class
room and hand them TO the teacher before
the class with some such little speech as
this: Miss Blank have brought you your
scissors for the term, exactly forty-five as
you will see-one for each member of the
class. If any of them are lost, why, OF
course, there will be no more forthcoming
till the next class comes in next term. So
some one will have to sit by without any
scissors while the others are cutting out
pictures. | am sure your class Will help
you take good care of them by always putt
ting them back in these nice little boxes at
the end of the lesson Miss Blank, on her
part, sees that they do by delegating two
of the class to give out the scissors and
gather them up again whenever they are
used. So that is how that weakness is pro-
vided against.
Before the principal, as she talked, lay a
hornets nest. a beautiful specimen that
some one of her assistants had brought In
from Christmas in the country You can
have no idea what godSend that has been
to this school," she remarked. And ia
the teachers no less than to the scholars.
When | came in this morning they were
all gathered around 1t, discussing II, how
it was made. ct cetera. Those who knew
told those who did not, and afterwards II
was shown to the children, too, and they
saw for the first time in their lives one
more bit of that wonderful country Of
which some of them haven't even a con-
ception. For these are the children many
of whom have never seen a tree. The near
est tree / know of is a mile and a half
away 1t is such conditions these that
make nature study so difficult in our
schools What is the use of trying to teach
what tree is to class that has never
seen one? The nature study experts whom
our teachers committees get here to teach
them how to teach 1t make the same mis-
take. One of them said for instances: Take
your class out for walk; teach them ma
ture by showing 1t to them OF course she
was greeted by laughter. Teach a class ma
ture by taking them out for walk through
the tenement house districts, where the
only nature is human nature, of kind,
too that it would be better fer them never
to See,'