The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1911-12-14


SCHOOLS. How can the county high
school system. the township symter,
OF school administration and the To-
cal district system of local taxation
all harmonic? Surely We have made
a by-word and Jest of that part of
our Constitution which declares that
there shall be uniform system OF
public schools in this State. The
only thing which Is now uniform in
our whole system is the two-mIil
state school tax. Verify our educa-
tional leaders have all been doing
that which is right in their own eyes
They have patched our educational
Israel over with their variegated
handiwork. And Ii will take a Saul
and a small revolution to re-make
their educational failures into some
thing like harmonious system
whose parts do not work against each
other.
! But the State has other school
questions besides those which center
around the topics | have been dis
study, methods OF teaching, aims of
instruction and ideals of what educa-
ton is. But 1t happens that In our
present stage of educational develop
ment here in North Carolina that our
largest educational questions are not
yet primarily concerned with these
things. But still we spend more time
these days talking about whether We
shall teach agriculture or cooking or
sewing or this or that in the schools
than we do discussing how We can
teach anything very effectively IL
schools which are mostly equipped
with unframed teachers who get the
average munificent salary OF $193.40
year. This average salary of North
Carolina white teachers in 1910 is
the real test of the efficiency of our
40 years educational patchwork,
and everybody ought to know it. The
public schools simply can not be eff
cient, they can not teach the ordinary
tools of knowledge on such meagre
salaries. Is it not hollow mockery
| of these poor teachers, then, to have
visions, as some do, of turning their
elementary schools into brickyards,
or foundries, or blacksmith shops, or
carpenter shops, Or aquariums, or
terrariums, or herbariums, or libra
ries, or kitchens, or sewing rooms,
or even into farms and gardens with
an industrial and farm-life atmos-
phere surrounding all the children
which shall attempt to fix the voca-
tion Of all who attend the schools?
| Under present conditions our ele-
mentary schools could not be orna-
mented with such vocational patches
without exciting the laughter Of all
/ the gods on Mount Olympus. We
school teachers can not teach voca-
| lions which We do not follow; We can
! not even make Industrial and COM
mercial specialists in our high
schools Think of brains which can
be hired for s193 a year fixing the
vocation and destiny Of immortal
souls.
For myself, I am fairly certain
that literature, history, geography,
drawing and Ehandwork, music arith-
metic and elementary science will
long continue to be the mental diet
of our elementary schools, and that
our small children will be permitted
to live out their elementary school
life in the leaisure atmosphere of
world ideas and ideals, whatever the
industrial Moloch may have to say.
Rail all you please against much OF
the dead Journalism of the schools, of
their failures to make connection be-
tween books and life, and I shall say
amen to nearly all of ii. But when
you begin to talk about back to the
farm about fixing the atmosphere
around my children, about industrial
education in the elementary schools,
about reforming secondary educa-
ton so as to make 1t merely an an
mex to the vocations, or about patch
ing up a secondary schol system with
one set of schools or courses of study
to prepare for college, another for
the industries, another for farmer
making, another for the technical
trades, and still another for the COM
mercial vocations, as Is now proposed
in many quarters, then I respectfully
beg to dissent from your proposed
caste system of education and to say
to you, that I still believe that the
body is more than raiment and that
life is vast deal more than the body
or than meat and drink. We must
still emnhasize the spiritual size of
the school, not the vocational and
the industrial. Many of us these days
are making ourselves the victims of
mere words. Spiritual efficiency in
the face of present-day problems is
vast deal better aim for our educa-
tional efforts than industrial eficien-
cy or economic competency. And un-
til we put our profession on foot
ing of responsibility and efficiency,