The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-08-19
"Fads- fin Education
New York Times.

Do not refine too much in the edu- cation of your children. Do as other people do." This extract from a letter of Johnson to Boswell might very well be the motto of the address of Chan cellor Whitelaw Reid of the Board of Regents of the State of New York, at tae recent convocation of that body MT. Reid begins by setting forth the enor- nous expenditure made by the State of New York upon public education. five millions and aAhalf last year. or far more than 1t appropriated for any other single object And of course the State expenditure Is only a small part about an eighth. of the whole amount, the rest being contributed by local taxation, for the whole amount raised in the State last year for public edu- cation was over forty millions, or S8 per capita. MT. Reid says, very truly, that the only justification for this enor- nous expenditure must be a showing that the State gets the worth of it's money. He proceeds to voice a distinct and growing suspicion that much of the money is wasted upon teaching inculcation of what 1t is agreed that commonwealth ought to know.
 This journal has often maintained spending of any public money at all upon any education higher than the primary so long as the primary edu- Gaton was withheld rom any cnlld.
 There is. or at least until very lately
 there was, general agreement upon what constitutes primary education. IL consists, proverbially, of the three
 R's," A little geography and little history added to these, and the Amer
 ican child has received all that the
 State is bound to give him. But then.
 says says, MT: Reid the three R,s must be
 learn till they really know, how to
 read. write and cipher. Until you make sure of that, let us have fewer frills."
 Do the pupils really know that? We have melancholy proofs that they do
 not. Take the case of West Point. The educational requirements for admission to the Military Academy are so ele- mentary as to excite the derision of the ambitious and up-to-date "educa- tors. They are, in fact, the three s, ana they are purposely kept down so as to allow the pupils of public schools
 all over the country to have an equal | matter of fact humble as these re- quirements are, the proportion of can didates who fail in meeting them is so | large as to constitute a serious indict- | the United States
 It Is refreshing to find the Chancel- Tor Of the University speaking out so strongly. against the efforts to convert the study even of the three R's into something rich and strange. The writ ing of children. he says. should be 'legible rather than obscurely elegant" Their spelling should be that accepted by the English speaking world, ''not what the reformers think 1t ought to accept or even believe 1t Is going to accept" Similarly, their arithmetic
 should be the arithmetic accepted by
 the English-speaking world. and should
 contain mo fads, nor even the metric fad"
 In other words, the common schools
 are for the purpose of intoxicating what
 mankind has accepted as primary edu- cation. not what the reformers think mankind ought to accept as such. They are not a field for pedagogic experi-
 mentation. and whoever tries to make them so is not to be trusted in their Administration. This talk of the chan. ceIlor's is not only eminently sensible.
 but nobody who knows the facts viii dispute that it-fS- also eminsntlx, ttualxA