Los Angeles herald., 1907-12-20
MANY HEAR
INTERESTING
DISCUSSIONS
NOTED SPEAKERS ADDRESS
TEACHERS
BURBANK TALKS OF TRAINING
YOUTHFUL MINDS
LARGE Amount of BUSINESS to Be
Transacted Today--Sesslons to
close with Tomorrow Mern-
ins's Meeting


Burbank. He was announced to speak a
| the Los Angeles high school at $3.50. fol
lowing that at the Polytechnic higi
school and at 1885 o'clock at Simpson
auditorium
His addresses were all brief, but com
prehensive and instructive The frs
one dwelt on the propagation OF the Bur
I bank potatoes; the second on cactus, anc
the third on the poppy. At his last ad'
dress he said in part:
1.-THE child in nature and processes oi
gorwth is essentially the same as the
plant only the child has a Thousand
strings instead of few, as has the plant
Where one can produce one change
for the betterment of the plant one car
produce thousand changes for the bet
terment of the child.
Surround the child with the proper
environment to bring out certain quail
ues and the results must come.
Work In the same way do with the
plant the development of the individual
is practically unlimited.
'I have taken the common daisy and
trained 1t and cultivated 1t by proper
selection and environment until it has
been Increased In size, beauty and pro-
ductiveness at least 400 fold.
do our educational methods do as
much for our children? II not, where is
the weakness?
Never put the child at work at books
and word education until the body is
ready for It
Careful Training Necessary
mot only would have the child reared
for the first ten years of it's life in the
open, In close touch with nature, bare
foot boy with all that implies for phys
ical stamina, but should have him reared
in love.
81 have taken the little yellow Cali
fornia poppy and by selecting over and
over again the qualities l wished to
develop have brought forth an orange
poppy, crimson poppy, blue poppy.
with the human? Is not the child as re-
sponsive?
''If the child has but the smallest trace
of some characteristic you desire to de-
velop take hold of 1t, care for 1t, sur
round 1t with proper conditions and 1t
will change more certainly and readily
than any plant quality.
This mere trace of character can be
increased, and increased just as 1 have
the size Of a Gala flower from an inch
and quarter across to foot across;
just as | have developed a disagreeably
odored flower into one having delightful
fragrance
you can take the stony qualities out
of the child's nature just as 1 have re-
moved the pit from the plum.
III we could have twelve families under
conditions where these principles could
be carried out unswervingy we could ac-
complish more for the race in ten gener-
atfons tnan can now be accomplished In
100000 years. Ten generations of human
life should be ample to fix any desired
ffrth IT, l. - -
is neither theory nor speculation Given
the fact that the most sensitive material
in all the world upon which to work is
the nature OF a little child; given ideal
conditions under which to work upon this
nature, and the end desired will as GER
tainly come as 1t comes in the cultivation
of the plant There will be this differ
ence however. that 1t will be immeas-
urably easier to produce and fix any de-
sired traits in the child than in the plant,
though, of course, a plant may be said
to be harp with few strings as com
pared with a child"
Every little brain kitchen, according
to the average orthodox pedagogical
view, must be filled with an ornate old
mathematical cupboard, crammed with
queer old arfthmetical relics and dear old
algebraic dry bones and sundry doses
of pennyroyal rules and blood root for
mulas
There are three great facts that are
every day growing more insistent In their
appeal to me. The first is that every
child who is not a complete mental de-
fective is capable of learning much-of
being trained to many useful habits.
The home and the school are the only
places where thiS training and learning
can be properly done.
Los.. r.-i.t.. L..t,
''The second is that at least every
third boy over II years old in America
today has gotten away from the training
of the home and the school before his
habits have been properly fixed.
THE third is that there are more than
5,O00,voJ men and women in the land who
can do nothing we'll and who have no
fixed habits of usefulness.
"These three conditions do not agree
with each other very well.
ITO take care of my yard and look
after my garden ! used to employ an
idiot boy who earned good iiving as a
gardener, yet only five years before he
had been taken to the school for the
feeble-minded at Sparta, so hopeless an
idiot he could not control a single mus
cular action.
He could not walk, talk or even feed
himself. Infinite patience in proper teach
ing and training had given power to
those nerveless. f1abby muscles and awak-
ened feeble mental processes sufficient
to make him peaceful and self-supporting
Hope for All
zone of the first boys that William
George took into his Junior Republic at
Freeville was a wharf rat from the
Shiny dens along East river. Born in
shame and bred in vice and crime, hope
lessly, irredeemably, bad. so they thought,
yet two years ago that same boy grad
uated from the Yale law school and is
today a promising attorney of his native
city.
"a true democratic education should
not only discover the specially gifted ones
in the various fields of youthful effort
and give their powers free chance for
growth and expression, but it should be
so diversified that 1t shall reach the aver
age child and give full opportunity for
the growth of such capacity as he may
have, however small that may be. In
fact 1t should even quicken the dull and
straighten out the defective.
"a few men are born with the genius
of successful effort. but most men attain
It by continual exercise of certain powers
= IA II. -