The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-01-15
HITSSTRAICHT OUT
Prof. McKeever Makes Startling
Statements.
More Attention Paid to Breeding
Stock Than Children.
REQUIRE NO TRAINING
Rearing of Young Children Is
Not Taught.
Suggests That 1t Be a Part OF
School Course.
REQUIRE NO TRAINING

"a Better Crop of Boys and Girls
was the unique subject of most in
teresting address delivered at the clos
ing session of the thirty-ninth meet
ing of the Kansas state board of ag-
riculture here last night by William A.
McKeever. professor of philosophy at
the Kansas Agricultural college.
In effect. Prof McKeever said that
young people should be taught the pro-
per relationships of marriage and that
the women who are expected to rear
children should be surrounded by all
the house conveniences possible to pre-
serve her health and equipose.
Prof McKeever after saying that
Kansas has more than half a million
boys and girls of the school age. and
that she leads the world as a labora-
tory of moral and civic righteousness,
declares: I'VE are altogether modern
and praiseworthy save in one respect,
namely we continue to follow E1gh-
teenth century methods of guess and
tradition in the all-important work of
rearing children"
while kansans are now riding on
the crest of great wave of material
prosperity, all our vast accumulation of
wealth represents simply an increase
of vanity and vexation unless we can
make it a direct means of helping the
men and women and the boys and girls
OF Kansas TO i've better PHYSICAL NOR
a and religious lives.
I'VE are now manifesting some of
the tendencies of the newly rich, con-
tinued Prof. McKeeveI. who hurry ex-
citedly about in an endeaYor to pur-
chase the direct means of happiness, but
in all this we shall tend gradually tow
ard class materialism and worse SEN
sualism unless we find some specific
ways whereby to make our surplus
wealth contributive to our higher spir-
itual needs.
ave have scientifically worked out
cards for scoring cows and pigs and
chickens but how about scoring young
men and young women who are candi-
dates for marriage? What are the cor
rect standards of form and symmetry
of body, of physical health. of know
ledge as to the care and instruction of
infants? What are the marks where
by a young woman whose hand is
sought in marriage may know good
man when she sees him and those
whereby young man may know
good woman?
Left to Chance and Gossip.
"All the foregoing important mat
tiers are left to chance and accident
and gossip, because of the fact that
we have been laboring under the fool
ish belief that love is blind and not to
be influenced by instruction or reason.
Young men fall in love with such sup
CRITICAL things as a big basket-shaped
hat or a mincing gait, and young
women with fiashy neckties and glis-
tening rings partly because they do
not know from intelligent instruction
what to look for as evidences of real
worth in the opposite sex.
I'VE require a long course of
schooling for the teacher, the physi-
clan, the veterinarian; we offer adj
vanced courses of instruction for those
who would do we'll in the breeding
q md of cattle hnUc nd
chickens, but we have no course of
training or any standard of require
ment for those who are to engage in
the complex and difficult task of
rearing young children in the home.
Now that the National Breeders
association is about to include a de-
partment of eugenics. it will not be
considered a matter of sentimentalism
for me to urge that there be instituted
for prospective parents something in
the nature of a course in matrimony
Let there be obtained by careful meth
DDS of study and inquiry body of