The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-06
THE WEEKLY JOURNAL. Issued Thursday. One Dollar Year.
4 REAL PROBLEM.

The reasons which have led the hitherto austere and secretive Board of Education to enter upon a profit able career of internal dissension are naturally not within our keeping. We nevertheless glory in them and are in- clined to encourage them to the ex- tent of our power. The Board of Ed ucation, like the other administrative boards of the city, is simply repre- sentative of delegated power and in using it is under the most sacred ob- legations to act with a full respect for the rights and wishes of those who pay the bills and who are entitled to receive what they are willing to pay for.
 We confess that we neither wholly understand nor value much the tech nical objections offered the efforts of the committee on new school buildings to erect a school building in the Wooster district which shall respond to the social as well as the education al needs which exist there. We are far more impressed by the character of the efforts made to gratify them The committee had the benefit of the advice and experience of Superin- tendent Beede, who is a conscientious public official and of Dr. Diamond, the supervising principal of that dis trict, who knows more in one minute of the problem which is pressing there for solution than the board knows in month. It Is quite under standable that the committee on school buildings was more concerned with facing that problem and work ing out the salvation of that particu- lar district than with technical objec- tions affecting the odds and ends of competitive rulings. It is because that was It's manifest attitude that larger consideration should have been given by the majority of the school commits sioners to the report of the commit tee. It would be one thing if this real problem which exists in the Wooster district, and which has it's roots In the very processes of assimilation up- on which the city must rely to solve the ever-present question of American citizenship, was conventional in char acter. To undertake to measure 1t by the thumb rule of dollars and cents is to miss altogether the point at is- sue, and for this reason to predicate an attitude towards school building upon the cost of the same is false reasoning. The rul4 which may be found to apply with perfect safety in one district refuses to work in an- other. and especially in district where the problem concerns the adults as much as the children.
 The school building which the com mittee on new buildings had in mind and which has now become enmeshed in lot of technical confusion Is the product of the committees under standing of the peculiar needs of the Wooster district as its members have been introduced to them by two ex- perienced experts, Superintendent Beede and Dr. Diamond. It is not strange that their enthusiasm in the splendid work to be accomplished got the better, if 1t did, of technical in. depreciation of the orders given then by the Board of Education. What the Board of Education should have been interested in and what the mem bers should have fastened onto wa. the motive of the committee or school buildings in recommending ar assembly hall for the use of the dis trict, a plunge and shower bath, room for defective children and tn, introduction of courses in social sci ence The cost of such a building i wholly incidental to the understand ing of the motive which recommend it, not that the money to be appro priated is to be determined upol without reference to the tax-payinI ability of the community, but tha consideration of the motive from
 dollars and cents point of view ex clusively is bound to end in the fail ure to understand the essential prin ciple involved The one nervous feel ing those have now, as a consequence of the action of the Board of Educa ton in disciplining its committee O school buildings, who have studio the conditions, is that the actue necessities of the case will finally b overlooked, and the opportunity los to introduce into the management C the schools of the city policy C supervision which shall always talk into consideration the special needs a given locality. The time has passe in the city of New Haven, as in ever large center of population where tn effects of cosmopolitan conditions al felt when school buildings can |