Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1912-04-03
A LET Ter FROM
ORA. ]. PARKER

UkA. j !. PAkkEk
Letter Discussing The Educational
Question Addressed 10 Min
? neap0liS Journal.
49, LIE Sueur, Mimi, Mar &c, 1912
Mr. H. v. Jones, .s
\ Editor Minneapolis Journal: I'D
Dear Mr.. Jones:
The tax payers of Minneapolis are
paying $4,000 a year, per pupil, to sup
port the public schools and the result
OF the expenditure is, as over all the
rest of the State, admittedly bad, unsat-
isfactory, .gravely and seriously INSULT
cient.
OF every 100 pupils entering the
schools, 60 fall out before completing
the eighth grade; only 81 enter the high
school and only nine 90 are graduated
from the high schools That is to say,
your educational machinery works with
such marvellous ineff1ciency that 81 per
cent of the material furnished is never
made up in pursuance of the plan and
any business man who has had an OPP
portunity to investigate, will tell you
that most of the nine 90 per cent Of the
pupils who complete the course, leave
school with very unsatisfactory know
ledge of writing, spelling, reading, COM
position and the use, generally, Of their
own language. They have been so alb
sorbedly occupied in trying to learn
things of no use to them that they have
had insufficient time to study those
branches that are of supreme Importance
to all. Your immense system Of public
schools, furnished with full compile
ment of modern buildings and modern
teachers, supplied with almost unlimit-
ed money for the carrying out Of their
ideals and principles is known by all
who understand anything about it to be
a gigantic failure as far as the practical
welfare of 81 per cent of the pupils is
concerned, as is so officially acknow
lodged to be by the COMMITTEE of
Twenty" of your grade school princi-
pals and, individually, by Professors w.
F. Webster, R. H. Jordan, j. N. Greer
and Albert Gullette.
Your present method Of conducting
the public schools and the present stan
dard of ideals to be subserved, has been
on trial there for forty years and have
always been just as inefficient as they
are today and have never brought about
any better results. Your schools are,
today, as they have been for decades
past, conducted as feeders for the uni
versity and with the object in view of
getting as many Of the pupils as pos
sible into the university. They have
been planned and off1cered and operat-
ed for the white shirt" nine out Of the
hundred, as Prof. Webster calls them,
solely and exclusively and not in the
interest of the blue jeans" ninety-one
as Prof. Webster also pleased to call
the boys and girls who have to leave be-
fore graduation. You, in Minneapolis,
are much better able to live up to this
white shirt" standard than the schools
in the other portions of the state, for
you are at the doors of the university
and it is vastly easier for your pupils
to attend the university as is shown by
the fact that more than half the uni
versity pupils are graduates Of the Min
neapolis high schools. Outside of Min
neapolis, the percentage Of pupils grad
uating from the high schools is far less
than nine Hon. William w. Folwell,
who was for fifteen years president of
the university, tells what is the matter
with the public school system Of Min
neapolis and of the state. He says Ut
the text books and the o5je:t fol which
they are provided and maintained.
School books are stuffed for the pur-
pose of filling up the time" He also
says. in regard to the proposition that
it is "cultural' for the pupils to put in
their time on difficult and abstruse stud
les, of no practical value and which
they do not afterwards remember, nor
use. 1.-The usual educators talk about
the little Importance of remembering
the things learned in college, is merely
the traditional PALAVER about disci-
pline of the mind being the all-import-
ant thing and mere learning subsidiary.
have doled out lots of that DOPE in
my time" He also says that what the
schools need is 1.-THE wedding out Of the
great mass of studies Of little general
use, leaving time for such as are i'm
portant to all. Let the one in
ten times ten thousand who needs to
know about the stressed vowels of Beo-
wulf, or Horner's methods of solving
higher equations, hire a private instruc-
tor"
l give these quotations from Ex-Presi-
dent Folwells letters because, they come
from a source undoubtedly qualified and
because they voice the belief Of vast
| majority of the people in regard to the
public schools and because they express
the facts. The New York Bureau of
Research says '"The schools have suf-
fered because of reverence in which it
has been held by the public. They have
been left to the professionals and have,
| the stronger currents of life. The work
| Of the schools has been made unreal and
unsatisfactory. They should be inves-
| tigated by men skilled in bringing out
the facts, rather than by educators like
ly to look for something to support their
view Of the case"
The schools have failed and are fail
ing now because they have been oper-
ated for the minute number Of white
| Shirts and not for the mass of the peo-
pie and have failed of being of value
even for the small number that have
been graduated, for the reason that they
have been and are now being operated
for the benefit of the one per cent OF
the pupils that reach the university, OF
any and all other colleges. Latin, Ger
man, French, higher arithmetic, alge-
bra, geometry and elaborate and infln'
itely difficult physics and chemistry
have been and are maintained in the
schools under the double proposition
that they are "culturar' and to force the
feeding of the university classes, and
their maintenance has driven and il
driving out the pupils by the hundreds