The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1914-03-05
REARING sTAY-AT-HoMEs.
Boston Herald Doubts Whether Vermont
Wishes to Do 1t.

A year ago the legislature of Vermont
babe the governor appoint commission
to survey the educational system of the
state. Without delay this commission
asked the Carnegie Foundation to make
the desired study and offer plans for
bettering the schools The foundation
has just issued its report-a well knit
document of more than 200 large pages.
While the report abounds in counsels
of perfection, even on affairs so hope
less as the wall decorations in college
students rooms, it particularly urges
three sharp changes: in the first place,
a revised course of study in the grades
and high schools; next, centred admin
istration for all the schools as parts of a
single system; then full freedom OF
school and college from political entan-
clement; training teachers for the ele-
mentary schools.
These general adyices are self approx
ing. And most of the narrower recon-
mendations they ground will find but
few opponents. Vermont for herself has
come to see the harm in making small
towns and even their districts the SOW
ereign units of school administration;
in substituting rival colleges with yearly
grants, comparatively leased for; in
maintaining normal schools not equipped
for a normal schools work Moreover,
like Maine and New Hampshire, YER
mont has come to see that education as
now directed favors the migration of
her ADLER sons and daughters to other
states. And so it win doubtless hear
gladly the foundations advice to weld
the system under one strong commits
sioner aided by skilled supervisors; to
give the course of study in the lower
schools a new stress on farming; to
drop the normal schools at Castleton
and johnson, replacing them with one
good training school; to cut off, as soon
as permissible. all state aid to the Uni
versity of Vermont, Middlebury college
and Norwich university.
But these iudicious counsels are not
the whole story. However at the first
look the state may like the report, every
Vermonter who believes in education as
the door of opportunity should ponder
with care and only the foundations well
defined conclusions but still more its
vague and undiscussed assumptions.
Here and there the report takes for
granted what every old-school New Eng
lander condemns at sight. The most
loyal Vermonter from Pownal to Canaan
would never dream of saying in cold
blood, keep the boys and girls in the
state by schooling them only for the
ow-barn and the lumber camp. Yet
the foundation says the same thing in
a softer wording; it advises the YER
monters to educate the sons and daugh-
tiers of Vermont for service in Vermont"
Those who know the Green Mountain
state know what that service would
mean. With no larger cities, with
total population less than that of Gin
cinnati, with resources almost wholly
in pastures and meadow, forest and
quarry, Vermont has little need for
lawyers and classics, little scope for
bankers of captains of industry; for its
own service it needs sheep raisers and
dairy men, foresters and farmers.
II Vermont should adopt all the
views and advices, if for
instance it should start the ordinary
high school course down at the seventh
grade and stop it two years short OF
readiness for college, the ambitious boy
who wants an education not for the
walls of an upland valley but for the
whole worlds work, who wants a train
ng for the widest service to his kind
would better choose his birthplace in
state that still aims its public education
lpward. Boston Herald