The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1912-03-08

as a tub into which the teacher may
pour a mass of unrelated facts, re-
CARDS it as an organism to be devel-
oped by contact with things and fore
es.
Is it not all unmitigated foolishness
that out of the four years the aver
age pupil spends in high school or
college that most of the time has to
be given up to the study of languages,
and especially dead languages? Is it
necessary to know no dead language
to appreciate the best literature of
the world, all arguments to the con-
trary Notwithstanding?
The argument that it is good dis
cipline for the memory is faulty, for,
in fact, mere memoriZation was the
bane of the whole system.
I'll wager our cooks new hat that
there is not a man in town that can
translate fifty words at random into
their Latin equivalents, nor is there a
college professor in Florida that
could make himself understood by a
Greek hotel keeper contemporaneous
with Herodotus.
A rudimentary elemental knowl-
edge of the foundation upon which
our language is built is all right, but
to use up nearly all ones youth pre-
tending to study Latin or Greek, and
then get nothing, is absurd.
What is education? Properly con-
sidered, it is the attainment of the
science of right living, or, the sci
ence of being happy.
Every fact or phenomena in this
universe is related to every other fact
or phenomena. The new education
gives the child the end ,of the string
and encourages him to unravel the
interviewer plot, and, all along, he is
discoverer, instead of parrot.
Plenty of men can conjugate Greek
verbs who can't tell you the differ
ence between planet and a fixed
star, and never heard of comic Sec
tions nor triangulation.
Thousands who can repeat the
names of mythical demigods know
nothing of the wondrous chemistry
of the plant life under their feet.
Millions of girls who can pronounce
the words on French bill of fare,
don't know how to swim, who live on
pickles and candy, and couldn't make
a hoecake to save their souls.
You may talk of industrial schools
for the children of the poor. 1t would
be better to establish industrial
schools for the children of the rich,
where they may learn not to say
things, but to do things.
When you get your new high school
building, put in a manual training de-
partment; teach the boys how to han
die saw and plane and forge chain
link; teach the girls how to make a
game pie, without using copper rivets
to hold the top lid on. Think of the
unspeakable atrocity of an American
girl talking French or studying the
WARS of Caesar" while not knowing
even the rudimentary elements of do
nestle science or those psychological
laws, knowledge of which is neces-
sary to make her a success as n
home maker and mother. Thousands
of American babies are murdered ev-
cry year by their fond mothers amaz-
ing ignorance in diet.
Education, in the ensemble, need
not be entirely unitarian. Apprecia-
ton of classical literature, music, i'm
agination, and the general poetry of
life, all are called for in the complete
man, but all this is based on a mate
rial sub-stratum and plenty of pork
and no poetry is better than the ar
tistic temperament and no bacon in
the smokehouse
LESTER WARNER.