The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1914-12-29
WELCOME TO THE
EDUCATORS OF FLORIDA

The Florida Educational Associa-
ton meets in annual convention in
Lakeland this evening and hundreds
of teachers and others interested in
the cause of education from all parts
OF the State are now here to take
part in the proceedings. We give
them, one and all, the glad hand, and
our welcome is thoroughly cordial,
for Lakeland believes in education,
and for the men and women who de-
vote their lives to this work and are
training up our boys and girls to
meet the duties OIL life with devel-
oped minds and consciences we have
a most sincere respect.
These annual meetings of the
educational forces of the State are
an admirable feature of our school
system, delightful on their social
side and always looked forward to
with pleasure, and viewed purely in
their professional light they have a
positive value very great indeed,
helpful and inspiring to the indi-
vidual teacher and beneficial to the
cause of education as whole. The
program lasting through three days,
and carefully prepared in advance,
is so varied that there is no tiresome
monotony and there is something
doing every minute, as the show
people say, to yield pleasure and in.
struction to those in attendance.
The problems of the world multi
ply as population increases and CIV
ilization grows more complex, and
nothing is better understood than
that in education alone can we find
their solution. Long ago private and
individual effort in this direction
was recognized as futile and made.
quate and the State itself assumed
the heavy burden OF giving free
education to all it's children. To per.
feet that system of public schools
to make it fully responsive to the
neds of rapidly growing popula-
tion requires the best wisdom of our
.wisest men and women, and it is in
these annual meetings OF the Asso.
citation, where carefully prepared
papers are read and considered and
there is full and free Interchange
OF thought by the leading educators
OF the State that new and valuable
ideas are evolved. And in the
friction of minds and cor.
dial mineling of those de
voted to great common cause of
paramount Importance, high, fine in.
SEPARATIONS come to strengthen and
encourage the teachers and give
them renewed interest in their work,
Florida has school system, al
ready good and steadily growing IN
excellence, but, like liberty, It re-
quires eternal vigilance to guard 1t
and perfect it, and part of that
vigilance is in the work of the State
Educational Association and it's con.
slant efforts to elevate the standard
Of the teachers. Instructors who
work merely "for the money in it"
have mistaken their vocation and in
justice to their pupils and the tax
payers they should seek some other
form of livelihood. For it is with
teachers as with all other activities
that there can be no efficiency or
high success without enthusiasm in
the work and genuine love Of their
labor for its own sake.
To give us better teachers, to
make them proud of their profession,
to vitalize their efforts and lift them
above the monotony of irksome
drudgery until they catch the vision
Of the true instructor who realizes
himself as a torch helping to en-.
tighten the world-that is the mis-.
sion Of the Florida Educational AS.
ISOLATION, and we bid it God speed
in it's work until every dark corner
in our State is flooded with the
light of knowledge.