Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1907-07-26

! ana TO uepfeSST MS faculties. Inc
best children in the school are quiet
children but the best children in ma
ture are the active children. Thus
! would say that If the child is lazy
! in school it Is because of his envir-
onment, lack of motives for work and
conditions to cause stupidity.
1--WE must change front and recog.
nize that the school-room is made for
the child and not for the teacher.
There is no natural interest in the
| school-room for the child, especially
! the boy. He is a savage and filled
with savage instincts. The school of
the savage has been for the most part
physical school-and so the boy
wants his physical nature helped and
trained. Work which allows the
use of the body, freedom of motion
end action, must take the place of the
tiresome desk-work and dull mental
application of the present.
But above and beyond all these
must the work be carried out into the
field and the wood, along by the river
and brook. The child must be
taught through nature Why cannot
beautiful hillside shaded with trees,
and carpeted with lovely flowers and
soft grass, be as good place to
teach as the dreary school-room and
drearier desk.
But more yet, the teacher instead
of always bringing the children to
him, must go out to them and must
teach them in their plays and their
doings.
1T is very gratifying to students and
lovers of children that much OF the
above is being recognized as necessary
in school work, and in some ways is
being looked after"
These are self-evident truths.
Whygour children have had to wait
till this late day to receive the most
ordinary, right as reasonable entities
cannot be explained in one paper.
There are still teachers who keep
children in after school hours for not
knowing lessons and, what is sadder
yet, there are teachers who whip chill
dren who do not know their lessons.
AS DR.. Christman says, If normal
children are lazy it is the teachers
fault ! say more, If normal children
are bad" or lazy or Indifferent, it is
because the teacher is lazy or indif-
| ferent.
Does he play with the children?
Does he have a deep interest IN the
life and attachments of his pupils?
Or is he only running machine,
wound up at 9 O'Clock each school day
and stopping at 2 or 4, as the case
may be? Perhaps the boy who stayed
away from school fishing learned more
during HIS absence than he would had
ne sat In the 3sahoolroom trying to
force an unwilling mind; if SO, tho
fact could be determined by an ade-
' quately equipped teacher, and the mat
ter treated accordingly.
: SKY-ROOFED. SCHOOLS
Why not, especially in Hawaii?
| Here we have such good climate
for this sort Of instruction.
The school could be taken out for a
lesson in> botany,i geology or any di-
D.
Such trip would give the children
more real knowledge, than week in
the school-room. r.
Let the teacher go to the seashore
for day, or to the woods, or out on
a lava flow.
What mere interesting or available
i subject than volcanoes or lava flows :.
The teachers nearly all went to the
, last flow at Kau.
! Would it not have paid the Govern
ment to have provided means of con-
veyance for the children of the vari-
GUS schools in Hawaii? The B. B..
! took even his baby at a considerable
sacrifice of personal comfort. 1t pays.
, The school outings would do the
children all good, boys and girls. They
could be chaperoned by the teacher, in
sections, and allowed to gambol like
lambs only gathered together now and
then for a little talk on what they
see.
Let the teacher in this way develop
the observing faculties-of more use in
this world than most of the book
knowledge we acquire. Is there a
teacher who can't walk mile or two
: in country like this? If SO, let him
go and do something else and give way
to better-fitted teacher.
The Government is not running an
cleemosynary institution for teachers.
Imagine taking a little sand and
gravel and clay and other stuff In one