The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1901-05-28

- 'inScd its SeSSiOnS-Which
arc held annually. and this
year in Columbus. Ohio. There has
| been some cheap witticism very
cheap indeed. flung annually at this
Well organized effort to bring. the
school and the home more closely in
touch with each other TO enable
teachers everywhere to secure the CO.
operation Of parents in cndeavorinC
To bring better conditions about in
the public school system is one of
the chief aims set before the con-
Gress. and steadily pursued by it, We
have seen that aim stated in reverse
FASHION. reverse hat fails absolutely
to state facts correctly. This wrong
statement. as given in the telcgra-
phic reports, is credited to a man. a.
state SUPERINTENDENT of education: but
his official position only makes his
words more misleading. After men,
tioninS the undoniablc fact that four
liftns Of the teachers of the United
states arc women, his putting of IL is
that 'it lies with them to cooperate
with parents to bring about better
S'l'nol tonultlOnS.
If he had said that it lies with
boards of education, school directors
and suporintondents to bring about
better school conditions he would
have come somewhere near stating
the truth. 1t is the mon in Official po-
sition. upon whom the very tenure of
the teachers places depend, who make
t-,.l,i ,t1n 70,
order schoo conditions in and by
means of which "teachcrs' hands are
tied" as said one of the most efficient
of Scranton teachers the other day,
and as every one who cares To look
into school conditions as they actually
are knows that he said truly.
What the National congress Of
mothers is accomplishing to most
profit is the awakening of both
mothers and fathers--therc are u good
many fathers who have the sense To
avail themselves of the meetings and
reports of the congress and of its
component state and neighborhood
assemblies or branches-to the neces-
sity of their organized action to bring
to bring, as already said, the home
and the school in closer touch.
IN this they find the teachers al
ready ready to welcome their CO.
operation. The teachers attend the
annual congress, those who can do
so. Those of them who are called
upon, being known as profoundly in
terested and experienced trainers of
young minds, give the assembled par
ents, and those who meet with them,
the benefit of their years Of school
room experience. Then the papers
which we have already alluded to
find it extremely witty to make de-
rogatory, sometimes vulgar, remarks
about the "old maids who undertake
to instruct the mothers how to bring
up their children" For the sake of
journalism it is pity such wit"
could not be eliminated from news
paper columns. II is poor business 10
be in, the creating of false impress
sions and unjust prejudices against
one of the best movement of recent
years--the organized effort to arouse
parents 10 real deep interest in
the public school to which the i'm
mense majority of them send their
children as matter Of course as soon
as they reach school age. Equally nf
course the most of them have never
troubled themselves TO cooperate
with teachers or do ought but blame
them if Jack or Roy, Jane or Gerald
inc, goes home with some childish
complaint over discipline enforced.
The congress just closed has dis
cussed in serious and weghty manner
many questions of the care and bring
ing-up of children from earliest in
fancy to the years when parental re-
sponsibility gives place to the indi-
yidual responsibility of the grown-up
son or daughter. 1t has taken up in
serious fashion the problems of the
best ways in which to care for ne
elected childhood that early becomes
pauper or criminal. If not rightly
cared for. The Mothers clubs. of
Philadelphia. represented always in
this national congress, have by per-
sistent we'll directed effort been large