The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-09-11
Children Must Spend More Time In Schools In Future President Luther, Of Trinity College, Points Out Weakness Of Pres
 ent System
MUST MEET NEW CONDITION
Our Children Behind Foreign Con temporaries==Eow This Condition
 Has Developed=.Its Cure
'(By F1aveI S. Luther. LID, I,r.csi-
 dent of Trinity CoIIege.)

@ < + ; (By F1aveI s. Luther, yL.L.D-a l'r'6ssI-
 dent of Trinity CoIlege.)
 One of the fundamental changes brought about by the development of
 our industrial and economic cieiltza- fion consists in this: That whereas a couple of generations ago the edu- cation or boys and girls was carried on in some fashion during most of
 their waking hours, it is now re- stricted to a much smaller proportion ! of their time. To be sure in those I session to the same extent that they are now, but it was possible to ac- quire a great deal of practical educa-
 ton out of school and almost every made most of their playthings them I selves. Boats, kites, bows and ar rows, cross-gunS, wagons, sleds,s wa i ter wheels. wind mills were very i largely manufactured by their Juve-
 nile owners. The same is true of dolls clothes. They were of home
 manufacture. Nor was this by any 1 means alI- From an early age the | children were expected to discharge pretty definite and sometimes high | ly objectionable home tasks. To split the kindEngs, to wipe and later I to put together the simple machinery of those times, to harness and drive the horse, to grease the wagon, to help
 mother with. the cooking, in short to be a, member of the community from whom. definite duties were exacted- this was expected of the boy and girl and the result Of it all was a very real kind of education. It was carried
 on at a time when parents took their children more seriously than they seem to take them now. They went to school in the winters and learned more or less. but they were really at school all the rest of the time and learned more rather than less The result tended toward a feeling of res ponsibiIity and to the production of a
 capacity for life which developed a fairly efficient sort of citizen There is not much of that sort of thing now
 outside of a few remaining rural dis tricts of the old sort.
 Children work indeed, but for the most part they work as factors in a
 highly sub-divided industry, learning 2 very little thereby, and in many cases losing all joy Of youth in premature industrial service. In the old days children learned more out of school j rnan in school In these days l. is more nearly true that whatever change which has brought about .h 2 Introduction Of manual training, do- IneStic science. and the various other stf range items fcun6 in the curricuIa- 1 of our graded schools and high r apprentice system has made the trade school an obvious and permanent De- cessdty, so the passing of the old time life with its responsibilities and i duties has made the manual trainiD g department and the model cooking es- (tablfshment a tentative substitute for the old shop and barn and kitchen
 But, and this is the point of what 1 the writer has to say, it is incr reasing- l 1y evident that the best possible re- suits cannot be expected if the chi1- dren are learning only five hours in each of T so days per year. As pret- ty much all of what the children are ] to know when they become young men and naidens must be taught them in school, clearly the schools must have time for this new and ex- ltensive task Nine hundred hours in a year of which the waking hours EexcIusfve of Sundays. are perhaps somethfng like 4,0o0, is altogether too