The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1910-04-12
THE TRAINING
OF chill DPEN
Ira w. TraveIl Discusses the
Work Of the Public Schools
for Good Citizenship.
ADVISES TECHNICAL TRAINING

Professor Ira Winthrop Travel, SUI
perintendent of Morristown's public
schools, spoke upon the subject Of
what schools are doing for good citi-
zenship and for efficiency in life's work
recently before meeting of men. His
paper was valuable one and we have
pleasure in presenting it in full to our
readers.
What our public schools are doing
to train our youth for good citizenship
and for efficiency in lifes work is a
subject thai is vitaIly interesting to
every thoughtful citizen.
The school, like home and church
and government, has fallen behind in
the mad pace of advance and change
made by industry and social life With
in a hundred years Like those other
great institutions, the school is to-day
bestirring itself to find new forms Of
expression through which it may bet
ter serve the needs Of the people and
put itself in harmony with the trans
formation in our industrial and social
life.
Progress in education appears in the
idea ward which it aims, in the en-
richNEfit OF the course Of study, inthe
democratic spirit in which education
seeks to reach all children of all sorts
and conditions, ia vocational insuruc-
tion in commercial and industrial sub
jects, in the systematic medical in
spection OF pupils growing out of
! better understanding of the intimate
relations of physical good health to
mental alertness and good morals, in
more efficient moral training through
the opportunities offended by the So
cial life and athletic activities of the
school, and finally in the vast sums OF
money dedicated to tie cause of edu-
cation.
The present aim of education, In
the words of DR.. Eliot, is to develop
efficient power for work and for SER
vice during healthy and active life.
Education comprehends two pro-
cesses-the training of powers and the
acquisition of knowledge" The child
begins new processes OF thought, he
thinks in new directions, he estab-
fishes new mental habits, much more
easily than The adult; but the adult,
with trained powers, has an immense
advantage over the child in the ac-
quisitiou of information. A good high
school graduate about eighteen years
old has done in fifteen hours all the
examples in arithmetic which the
grammar school children did ia two
years, giving one-ffth of their time to
the subject each year. Young men,
twentY-one years of age, have often
mastered within three months the
whole of the Latin . ON which the
high school student spends four years
of study. "The important things to
accomplish through education in
childhood and inyouth are, therefore,
The initiation OF mental processes and
the establishment Of good mental
ha5ius aith Incidental acquisition Of
Ilnformation. Continued education
during adult life viii provide inereas-
ing stores Of information"
In harmony with such an ideal has
been theenriehneutof of the elementary
course Of study, 40 colonial days the
three Rs constituted the whole Of the
elementary notwithstanding with
spelling, writing and arithmetic.
About the middle OF the last century
tCoNTINUED ON FOURTH PAeEl