Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1910-03-09

demon a II Z1ng
tendency Of public school education
The metropolis has, including high scnoois,
651 1925 children enrolled in it's 514 school
houses, which cost 500, $4,000, and has teacn'
ing and supervising force of 16,4S9 PERSONS
whose combined salaries amount to $l1,ool,ooo
a year.
For weeks 1 went from school to school,
from class room to class room, from teacher 10
teacher, from principal to professor, observ'
ing, questioning, comparing, analysing the OLD
idea of the common school with the new par
ticularly looking to see how theory consisted
with practice and results.
To start with, I had the fact that there 1s
general complaint that the boys and girls who
come from American public schools write bad
ly, spell badly, and are weak in grammar and
arithmetic.
But facts are hard things to overcome, and
the more searched for evidence with which
to shame and confound modern pedagogy and
it's methods, the less I disposed to con-
denim, until finally it became plain that L. in
common with the general public, was mistaken,
and that an attack upon what is known as the
new education" could not be justified That
there is some waste and much that is expert
mental in it cannot be denied But the great
groundwork of it seems to be sound and prac-
teal.
It is claimed that the old system of teach
ing children in the schools was based on an
ignorant theory of the human brain. The idea
was that stern, high drill in a few subjects
developed mental power that could be used
in all subjects. Teachers have assumed that
the mind was a group of general powers or
faculties, such as observation, comparison, at
tention logic, memory, language, and so ON,
and that intensive study along the line of
any mind faculty would develop that faculty
as whole and practically for all purposes.
1t is now held by leading educational au-
thorites that the brain, instead of being col
lection of few general faculties, divides itself
investigation into countless specifications,
and that mental power developed in one func-
ton Of the brain cannot as a rule be trans
ferred to another function.
That discovery upsets the foundations on
which education has been based for centuries
and, together with the modern demand for
technical and manual training to meet indus
trial problems, accounts for the sweeping
changes observable in the public schools.
To-day the teaching profession has grown
to enormous proportions. There are in the
United States alone more than half a million
teachers and college professors That is more
than third of the membership of all the pro-
fessions combined. The teachers of the coun.
try outnumber the lawyers or physicians more
than four to one.
Pedagogy has suddenly become conscious
profession which seeks to establish itself upon
firm scientific basis.
The new idea is that broad curriculum,
embracing, in addition to the three RS, man
ual training, art, science and nature studies,
touches all the latent possibilities, tastes and
ambitions of the child; arouses. interests and
develops its capacities; and, so, prepares it for
self-realization in it's life vocation.
Such investigators as Prof Edward l..
Thorndike, professor of educational psychology
in the Teachers college, Columbia university,
declare that actual scientific tests show that
the specialization of the human mind is "even
greater than ordinary observation leads one to
suppose
That thrillingly beautiful Gel emory in which
100000 New York school children and their
$4,000 teachers begin each mornings work by
stretching out their hands to the American
flag and solemnly pledging allegiance to it is