The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-12-12
FER. STANLEY
 ON TEACHING
Takes Exception to Some of Secretary Hines Remarks
 in His Report
DEFENDS THE MONKS
System of Teaching Which They Made Stands Times Test
 Normal Schools

Charles D. Hine, secretary of the board of education of Connecticut, in his 1911 report, under the head of present educational problems (page 321) goes out of his way to say that monks, in books of only theoretical outlook, written in the cIoisters, are convicting themselves of mendacfty, in their previous utterances, and are repenting, but no power on earth can give them dissolution; that these monks serve the useful but rather ig- noble purpose of convicting others of sins, which they themselves have com mitted and long condoned." This ref erence to supposed faults in teaching is unwarranted. This is an unusual tone for MT. Hine. If the report did not bear his signature, one would not believe that i it emanated from his pen. The asser- tions quoted, which have no bearings on the context of his report, are grat- i uitous, and can be gratuitously de- nied Until MT. Hine affords proofs of these statements they stand with out value.
 The monks who have invented sys- tems of teaching, some of which are used in our public schools, having the experience of fifteen hundred years in teaching, do not produce educational literature that is "only theoretical" !" They are decidedly practical.
 They believe in thoroughness as a fundamental principle. They can have no part with the superficial sys- tems of our day. When they were the teachers of the world, professors spent ten and twenty years in prep aration for the teaching of one branch. almost anything for five dollars. In the olden days, the pupils of the monks learned a few sciences and learned them thoroughly; to-day the graduates of our public high schools can talk fippantly on many things, ! and cannot spell nor write English correctly.
 !; Last Wednesday the mayor of New York city scored the superficial meth eds of teaching in the public schools in this fashion: ''I think that a large percentage, if not the largest percen- tage of children in our schools, have more than they can do. We try to teach them too much, and the result is that they come out with superficial knowledge about a lot of things, but no accurate knowledge about any, . thing.''
 The monks" who teach in scores of . colleges throughout the United States are amazed at the superficial charac- ter of the teaching in the public high schools whose graduates come to them without even a knowledge of the ele- ments of English grammar. Here are educational sins in plenty, which the monks are deploring, and which they have never committed.
 The monks are not ''repenting" of principles which they have always ad- vocated and which are as unchange- able as the eternal verities. The pub lie gran mar and high schools of our country will return some day to the systems of teaching evolved by the monks centuries ago, and will Ire pent'' of the superficial methods in vo- que to-day, and the monks will be kinder than Charles D. Hine, and will give them absolution.
 Henry Barnard. who spent several years in Europe studying the educa- tional systems used by the monks once stated that his normal school plan was copy of the system of the novitiates of the religious teaching orders Of the Catholic church in Flu rope
 If the monks of European novi- tiates were to inspect any of MT. Bar nard's normal schools in Connecticut they would blush at the utter ineff- ciency of it's faculty.
 | WALTER J. STANLEY. %T