The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1912-09-14
colFAx GRANT PARISH La SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER IA,

the curse of our public schools"
That is why | say that the American
public school system is absolutely stupid
in it's method. The method is grossly
stupid because it is absolutely impos-
sible.
My second indictment against the
public school is that it is absolutely i'm
practical in plan. Let US see why this
is so. The child at six years enters
school for the first time, and is placed
in the first grade with forty or fifty
sometimes seventy or eighty other
children. All forty, or eighty, as the
case may be, are under the care of one
teacher. If any reader doubts the
truth of such an overcrowded condition
just visit the school in your nearest
large city. Now the training that is
given during this first year is of supreme
Importance to the child. 1t may deter
mine his entire future. In what does
this training, then, usually consist?
The child spends four or five hours each
day to acquire the knowledge and dis
cipline he should have gained, under
right conditions, in thirty minutes. This
is not theory, but fact-unshakable, un-
deniable fact that has been fully de-
monstrated over and over again: that
what now takes the child in public
school four or five hours day has
been learned. again and again, in thirty
minutes and less, by the child receiving
the right attention. In other words,
what takes the child now eight hundred
hours in his first year at school, under
the convict lock-step and "all-children-
are-alike system, can be, and has been
again and again, accomplished in one
hundred hours, and easily and agreeably
at that. Where? In the few public
schools that have broken away from
the pernicious 'all-children-are-alike'
system. But how can any teacher with
forty or eighty children do this? OF
course it is impossible and out OF the
question. The teacher knows this
every teacher knows it-but what car
she do? Her system is given to her
she is paid to follow it, and woe to hei
if she departs from it! What does she
naturally do? Her work each year is
in keeping the children so employed as
to cause her the least annoyance, anc
to see to it that the class moves aheac
in lock-step, getting the average
mark, so that the class can pass the ex
aminations for promotion to the -pex'
grade, and so on through each grade t
the examinations for entrance to high
school.
One important fact must be remem
bered about all the studies and thu
whole system of the elementary public
school: that they are keyed absolutel!
and conducted solely for one aim: u
fit the pupil for graduation to the higl
school. Here is an entire system o
education for the first eight years of
child's life keyed to one sole and singh
point; for entrance to the high school
Now how many pupils from the ele
mentary schools enter the high schools
you ask? Here you have hit on tn
Joker in the whole situation: Just seve
out of every one hundred pupils fror
the elementary school ever enter tn
high school.
s'But what in the world becomes Q
the other ninety-three?" you ask j
surprise.
They just drop out: large numbe
of parents cannot afford to keep thel
boys and girls in. school beyond the elt
mentary school, and they send them
work; other children beg not to b
sent to school any more, and they 6
to work from choice; others, either pr
rents or children, get Disguised and d.
eide that IAN education is not what
| is cracked up to be'-and so on. VIVA
ever the reason the startling fact n
mains that only seven out of every on
hundred children enter the high schoo
Now, you parents who read thes
words, remember that these condition
tandfigure are absolutely true. Which
ever of them you doubt, and l do M
blame you for your doubt, because tt
conditions are almost inconceivabl
you can verify them from any well-il
| formed educator, teacher, or, if ye
choose, from the United States Cover
ment's own figures in the reports I
the Commissioner of Education
Washington.
CONTINUED merit week.
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