The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-03-20

So much for an authoritative state
ment from the secretary as to what
the union is doing. 1t is a matter Of
interest to know what many people
outside the organization think it's pos
Eibilities.
Yes" said a woman of prominence,
while discussing the enterprise. There
is work-hard work and plenty Of it
for school union. The members Of
the school board are busy men. They
have all they can do to attend to the
routine duties of the system, and it is
not their chiefest joy to lose sleep hunt
Ing up defects in the special organs of
the body scholastic or work themselves
into chronic dyspepsia bordering over
effective remedies"
Your remarks infer some serious de-
fects in the city schools. What are
they and who are to blame for them?"
queried The G. o b e representative.
In the first place L think there is a
lamentable lack of sympathy between
the teachers and the parents. This is
due in part to the Widespread ignor-
ance of the advanced methods of edu-
cation, and in part to the character of
many of the teachers employed.
The mothers remember CD the
cid rules for doing arithmetic
Her child comes home with new
methods, over which his little
tears of encouragement, and the
mothers heart is touched for his trou-
bic and her Indignation aroused at the
teacher for using such brain teasing
methods, forgetting that in ye olden
days the old methods teased her brain
quite as much, if not more. The boy
goes to school the next morning with
out his lesson, and the teacher does
not fail to see in the confident, don't
care light in Johnnies eye that mama
doesn't think much of his teacher. Con-
sequently the teacher forms the opinion
that Johnnie has a molly-coddle
mother. The women avoid each other,
and before long an inSurmountable bar
Tier grows up where harmony and per
feet understanding should exist
But who is to blame for this
arrangement? Would you have the
overburdened mother make a periodic
attack upon arithmetical and grammat-
1cal rules every time new method is
introduced. Or would you have the
teacher go to the mother and explain
that the new methods are better than
the old and that it would be better for
Johnnie if his teacher was not criti-
clsed in his presence?"
IF the mothers saw more of the
schools and the teachers, and the
teachers saw more of the homes and
the mothers, such an idiotic estrange-
ment would not occur, for the mothers
would see for themselves that meth
DDS are not a matter Of choice with the
teachers, but are incorporated into the
system. They would see for them
selves the difficulties under which the
teachers labor, and help to remedy
rather than to criticise the defects of
the system"
How can the School union create
such bond of sympathy"
by bringing about social and edu-
cational intercourse between teachers
and parents. Right here, think, is the
work of the school union, and they
should begin with the board of educa-
ton, insisting that that body place
teachers in the schools who are sue
cesses first and foremost as men and
women. The school union, not only
that but every citizen, has a right to
demand that no woman be given
position simply because she successful
ly manipulates arithmetic propositions
and grammatical formula and is with
in the limits of Responsibility, to al
low her to set herself going like a
pedegogic machine back and forth from
her home to the school until she has
tramped herself into a rut, so deep
that the busy, seething world sees not
even the top of her head, is not only
fatal to the interests of the schools, but
is cruelty to the teacher 1t is this
system which gives point to the we'll
known injunction Of Emerson's think,
when he said: Hoe corn, saw wood
scrub floors, weave ropes and hang
yourself at the end of one of them, but
don't be a teacher"
What, then, is your idea of good
teacher?"
II should say that a good teacher
was one who could go into the school