The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-06
U. s. WOMEN IN ARGENTINE
THEIR CHEAT SUCCESS AS TEACH
 FRS.
Our Public School System Has Firm
 Hold I here.

Our Public School System Has q Firm
 Hold here.
 "To see the American public school
 system approaching a point of perfec-
 tioh one should go down and teach in
 sunny Argentine" said Mrs Clara C..
 Bischoff, director of the Escuela Nor
 maj Nacional at Rosario, Argentine
 Republic, South America. Mrs. Bis choff is a St. Louis woman who Tor seV-
 enteen years has taught school In the
 Argentine Republic and is now in New
 York on her way back from the peda-
 eogical congress in Paris, to which she was sent as a delegate by her gov
 ernment. She is the principal of the
 Normal school at Rosario, and the
 building is the largest used Tor educa-
 tlonal purposes in South America It stands in the center of the city on 1he
 Plaza Santa Rosa and occupies an en-
 tire block. There are sixty rooms Tn
 the structure including gymnasium perfectly equipped.
 T take intense personal pride ln the building" said Mrs Blschoff "becausa y
 go. N. r., and I worked for it's erection. You see down there all the norman schools are under the direction or the government and are always in the cap- itals of the province. My school was originally in Santa Fe, the capital or the province of Santa Fe, of which Ro- sario is the chief commercial city But the old. conservative element objected to the innovation of public schools ana the normal school was moved to Rosa rio. There was then no suitable bulld~ | ing, so we went into an old, ramshackle hotel, which we adapted to our purpos- es as best we could and the people were | so eager over the American school that
 they aided us in every way to become permanently established there. The government builds the normal school, but the province gives he land. A l land concession was finally granted lh Rosario and I had the immense sat1s- faction of experimenting the erection of the normal school building and fur nishing it throughout Miss MOTION at that time went to Buenos Ayres ana I became principle
 "The principals of the normal schools down there live in the buildings. l have beautiful suite of eight rooms overlooking the Plaza furnished ana appropriated to me by the government, so that my only household expenses are my actual living and servants wages. The pay of the average teacher ln the Argentine Republic is 25 per cent. more than here And after thirty years ser vice all teachers are retired on full pay"
 This state of the public school system has been the growth of many years The introduction of the system into the Argentine Republic was the work or Domingo Sarmento, who was presi- dent of the republic in the early '70s' He had lived in the United States as secretary to the Argentine minister at Washington. A progressive man and intensely interested in educational work, he studied American methods, particularly in Boston. One of his first acts on becoming president of the Ar genuine Republic was to get American teachers down to his country and en- deavor to establish public schools. Of those who went first few remained; the country was in a constant state of rev olution and life in the provinces was little too uncertain to suit the Yankee taste. President Sarmiento persevered, however, got down more teachers and during his term did much for law and order by introducing the telegraph, de- veloping the railroads and educating the people.
 "Sarmiento implanted In the Argen- tine heart" said Mrs. Bischoff, "the love of everything American. He translated into Spanish the lives of Horace Mann. Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln, and did more than any other one man to raise the country to the front ranks of South American repub- lies Our present president, Julio A. Noca is a worthy successor of Sar- miento. He, in 1883, permanently ts- tablished American teachers in Argen- tine He believes in American school methods, wants every innovation in the line of progress, and it is for that that am now making an investigation of the public schools of New York, Boston and Chicago before I sail on November | 20 for Rosario"
 According to Mrs Bisohoff, American l school teachers are tremendously popu- lar in Argentine. Curiousy enough, l the men who have gone down from the | United States to teach have not been | successful and have not remained, but | there are four government schools in | charge of American women and many | American teachers. Mrs. Bischoff has | two in her school Her niece, Miss Ma | mic Giles, of Steeleville, Mo, is the vice | principal of the Rosario normal school, | and another American girl. Miss Choate of Minnesota, established and is carrying on the kindergarten.
 Our school year is from March 1 to December 1,'' said Mrs. Bischoff. Be ing on the other side of the equator our hottest months are December, January and February, when we take our vaca- tion. Our school session is from elev- en to gour, with ten minutes recess at the end of every hour and fifteen min utes for luncheon. It is a Catholic country, you know, and we have to close the school on religious holidays. As there are forty of these we have school on Saturdays to make up for then