Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1912-11-13
MAN
HITS AT SCHOOLS

Baltimore, Nov 13.-The American
school system was severely criticised
by Prof Royal Meeker of Princeton
university in an address before the
American Prison association. Profes-
sor Meeker's subject was "The Con-
nection of Our School System and Our
Prison System" He tried to show
how the population of the prisons
could be reduced by reforms that be-
gan in the schools.
While he ackpowiedged> that our
schools pay, he declared THAT they
should pay better. But" he said, 81
think it probable that we could get
all the good results achieved by our
schools for less than one-half what we
now pay.
Il think" continued Professor Meek
er, the supposed influence of our
schools upon our morals is greatly
misunderstood and somewhat exagger-
ated. Ignorance is commonly used
anonymously with immortality, vice
and crime. Some of the 18th century
writer's thought that man could be re-
deemed from sin and crime by the A.
b. C's and the multiplication table.
We now recognize that mere informa-
tion has little to do with right con-
duct. Those familiar facts of our
childhood, The bug is in the rug and
Seven times nine is SO or 67' what
eve rit may be, do not incite to deeds
OF high moral emprise. | doubt the
efficacy of those excessively moral
yarns contained in the school readers
about George Washington and the
cherry tree, and the bad little boy
who sto,e apples from the old apple
woman and, years afterward, died a
miserable death in the workhouse as a
result. 1t may be that the ability to
read does make some individuals
more virtuous | am sure IL makes
/ some more frivolous, more worthless,
more wicked by enabling them to feed
/ upon trashy reading matter. Neverthe-
/ less, our schools do promote morality
/ much more than immortality.
The greatest value of the public
school consists in its democratizing in
fuence. They give us a common me.
dunn of intellectual exchange-the
English language. Without a com
mon spoken and written language
union and democracy would be i'm
possible. OF course, we are less say.
age, more sympathetic, more truthful
more honest because we have a com.
mon literature, a common morality
common laws. Some Of the democra
tiZing effects of our schools are, how
ever, clearly injurious. Communal
whooping-cough, measles, chicken pox
diphtheria and the like; democratic
lying, profanity, obscenity, and other
immortality are undesirable by-pro
ducts of wholesale democratic educa
ton in the public schools. 1t will
probably be impossible to eradicate
these evil influences without eradicat
ing the public school. If We had nc
schools, plainly the schools could no
be blamed for these evils. II is Otter
charged that the public schools spread
contagious diseases and immortality
Would these evils cease if the publit
schools were abolished? Certainly
mott They would be disseminated
from other centers. The schools die
not invent immortality and persona
uncleanness. They found these evil
existing within the community. Th'
worst that can be said of the schools
: is, that they have been unable Il
= eradicate these evils. Who can doub
: that our schools have lessened them
: We ought TO be careful in criticizinl
/. our school system TO make it clea
, that We are comparing our presen
= system with an ideal or approximate!
ideal system. We do not compare
with 10 system al all When sa,