The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1912-10-16
IS the PUBLIC SCHOOL A
FAILURE?
by A. Il. Winship, Editor journal of
Education.

August mas been led TO say JnaJ Jne
failure of the public schools is so
momentous as to be astounding and
proceeds to give "a group of statisti-
cal monstrosities in proof thereof.
AS to opinions we have nothing to
say, but when one attempts to give
as a reason for the opinion as fact,
statements that have not the shadow
of suspicion of truth in them, there
is occasion for public and emphatic
protest.
Those who have followed me on
the PLATFORM or in the press, need
not be told that educational prog
ress is my slogan and that wherever
there is improvement in school con-
ditions, administration, methods or
spirit, there we place the emphasis.
We protest, however, that educa-
tional progress is hindered and not
helped by such misrepresentation as
appear in the Ladies' Home Journal
for August under the title, rs Our
Public School System Proving an
Utter Failure? 1t is; the Most
Momentous Failure in Our American
Life To-day"
We deal with a few of the more
momentous misstatements.
Just seven out of every 100 pu-
pills in the elementary schools ever
enter the high school"
There is not q trace of diluted
truth in this statement and its fall
sity is so apparent that wayfarer
with his eyes closed could hardly be
such a fool as not to see 1t. The
only way to obtain seven per cent. is
to assume that the entire 16,000,-
900 children now in the system from
the kindergarten to the high school
should be in the high school. This
is proposition so preposterous that
printers devil who did not see it's
absurdity should be discharged.
But what in the world becomes
of the other ninety-three? They
just drop out; a large number of
parents can not afford to keep their
boys and girls in school beyond the
elementary school and they send
them to work; other children beg
not to be sent to school any more
and they go to work themselves;
others, either parents or children,
get disgusted and decide that an ed
ucation is not what it is cracked up
to be-and so on. Whatever the rea
son, the startling fact remains that
only seven out of every 100 enter the
high school,"
This is intensely and momentous-
ly silly. Where are the 100000
that are not in the high school?
Why, according to the conditions of
the statement, they are still in the
elementary schools. The whole con-
tention is that the 100000 pupils
are in the elementary schools and
not in the high school. BY sort of
literary legerdermain, these 16 6,OOO,-
600 children who cause all this
trouble by being in the elementary
schools are suddenly taken out of
school altogether by various awful
domestic and industrial processes
and tragedies 1t is the biggest
bunco game imaginable to try to
work both ends of that statement.
One statement or the other must be
momentously false. The 16,OOU,OOO
children, or the other ninety-three
per cent, are either in school or they
are not. By no possibility can they
be in school to bolster up one state
ment, and at the same time out of
school to bolster up the other.
There are 100000 children of
school age in America and yet fewer
than 20,000,000 are in school"
Again, this stupidity is simply mo-
mentous. 25,000,000 children of
school age! What is school age?
The article assumes that it is COM
pulsory school age, which is usually
from six to fourteen. But school age
is usually from five to twenty-one.
OF the 100000 children of school
age, 100000 are either under six
or over fourteen and it is no crying
evil for a child of five not to be in
school and it is not a momentous
failure if those above fourteen are
not in school. According to these
figures, about 100000 children
who are not expected to be in school
by the general judgment are there
and the wonder is not that there are
100000 children of school age who
are not in school, but that 5,OO0,-
600 such children are there.
1t would not require an overplus
of brains to realize that 25,000,000
is about thirty per cent. of the en-
tire population and it would be in
conceivable that nearly one-third of
the entire population could be be-
tween the years six to fourteen.
'The public school is not Ameri-
can in it's origin; it comes to US from
across the water; it is principally of
Dutch origin. 1t was grated on to
our national life when ideals and
conditions were different than they
now are. Roughly speaking, the
public school is about fifty years old
in America"
Roughly speaking, the public
school is about fifty years old in
America" There is no possible
with facts that can locate the birth
of the public schools within two
hundred years of fifty years ago. Ex-
cept in some of the Southern states
there have been public schools in
every state from the time each was a
colony or territory until the present
| time.
Surely the public school did not
come from the Dutch fifty years ago!
| The most momentous trick we ever
saw is the putting of those state
ments in the same paragraph. 1t is
an old saying that "one needs to
| have a level head, clear mind, and
/ ralia hla namnrv IN mako a nrpFac