The Republican journal., 1900-04-12
The Bangor School Report.

Snow, superintendent in the public schools
of Bangor, contains recommendations and
suggestions that will be found of interest
and value outside of that city. What she
says of the Bangor High school brings a
realizing sense Of the inadequate facilities
and lack of room here to make our high
school all that it should be. Miss Snow
saws: 1.-The removal of the boiler rooms
| to building built for the purpose, the
establishment of complete and perfect
system OF heating and ventilation, the
| finishing and equipment of laborato-
ries and class rooms in the vacated
space, the furnishing and perfecting
of the room arrangement for COM
plete carrying forward of the plan for
a commercial course, have all combined
to make the physical surroundings of the
| pupils of the most delightful and health
| full character as we'll as of the best and
wisest kind from the standpoint of utility
| and economy of working force" The
commercial course has been great sue
cess, drawing into its work at once about
14O pupils. 'sThe object from the begin
ming was to make the course rich in dis
ciplinary and culture subjects in order
that the danger of narrow and one sided
education should be avoided. History,
science, modern languages, higher mathe
mates and commercial geography were
therefore added to the purely technical
commercial subjects of book keeping,
stenography, typewriting, commercial
law, banking and penmanship. The
course covers three years, with the very
strong recommendation that pupils take
four years and thus round out and finish
a very generous and excellent education"
'Ehe excellence of the new physical
and chemical laboratories" says Miss
Snow, ''has awakened a fresh interest in
the already thorough work done in those
departments. Here such facilities are
lacking, and greatly needed. We quote in
full what Miss Snow says Of the Kinder
galten and of manual training, two feat
ures conspicuous by their absence from
our present school system:
kINDERGA RTENs.
We now have in successful operation
four public kindergartens, all of which
bear testimony of the extraordinary fac
tor which this institution is in the develop
ment of the power of the child. The
work of extending the establishment of
these schools halts only by reason of lack
OF school room space. The public COM
plains, and with reason, of the manifest
injustice of shutting certain Deighbor
hoods out of the privileges of these schools
which are SO much appreciated by their
more fortunate neighbors. Surely some
means can be devised for the immediate
extension Of the system.
In one of the largest manufacturing
plants in this country is posted in con
spicuous places all over the premises the
following placard: by the Year 1915,
no applicant for a position in the fac
tory will be considered unless the APP
plicant, when a child, attended a kin
dergarten.
When the serious commonsenSe of the
business man takes this attitude in regard
to the worth of the kindergarten and puts
SO high a unitarian value upon it, the at
tacks OF the people who have never at
tempted to master its profound and far
reaching philosophy have small weight.
A we'll known chief of police in one of
our largest American cities says he has
never known an arrest of a person who
has had a kindergarten training. The
bending OF the twig 50 surely inclines the
tree.
MANUAL TRAINING.
The call for manual training in the
schools has spread far beyond the circle
of this department and comes from every
portion Of the city. The demand is pIac-
lically universal and cannot be longer
quieted by the soothing ''by and by
Care Ill statistics show that carpentry
for boys and sewing for girls can be es
tablished in our schools for $500, in ad-
dition to our fixed expenses. This will
place tDese kinds of training in grades l.
s and 9 of the grammar schools, and
make an elective course in the high.
The contention of some of it's oppo-
nents is that the schools are already over
crowded and that this will work the chill
dren beyond their strength, to which may
be said that the training of the motor
side Of the child quickens all his powers,
rests the intellectual forces and so trains
anu develops his judgment ana ODSerVd-
ton that his whole working power is in
creased. This is proved by statistics from
hundreds of schools where the question
of fatigue has been studied from scien-
titic standpoint.
There is no superintendent who has
ever had manual training carefully estab-
lished in his school who does not give an
unqualified testimony to its quickening
power on all the rest of the school work.
Another critic declares that the home is
the place for this kind of work. 1t seems
almost Incredible that any thoughtful
person can look on at our city conditions
and assume that any boy has the opportu-
nifty to use his bands that the boy from
the farm has.
When we look at the successes achieved
by country boys and study the causes we
are forced to the conclusion that his power
has come through his adaptability, through
his curiously ready skill in turning his
hand to anything. He never questions
his power to do whatever comes upper
most because he has been trained to rely
upon his hands as much as upon his head.
His long winter evenings spent in mending
all sorts of farm implements may never
seem to prepare him for controlling finan-
cial situations on Wall street, but the
careful thinker must see that the habit of
mind and body which has made him un-