The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-06-27

Miss Repplier Writes of Present
School Fancies.

With keen wit and sane Judgment
Agnes Repplier in the Atlantic thus
summarizes Popular Education:
This is so emphatically the chill
dren's age that a good many of us
are beginning to thank God We were
not born in it. The little girl who
said she wished she had lived in the
time of Charles IL, because then
education vas much neglected" wins
our sympathy and esteem. 1t is a
doubtful privilege to have the atten-
ton of the civilized world focused
upon one both before and after birth.
Begirt by weltwishers, hemmed in
on every side by experts who speak
of 'child-material' as if it were raw
silk or wood-pulp, how a a little boy
in this enlightened age dodge the edu-
cational influences which surround
him? 1t is hard to be dealt with as
"child-material" when one is only an
ordinary little boy.
He is powerless to evade any rev.
Citations we choose to make, any facts
or theories we choose to eIucidate.
We can teach him seX-hygiene when
he is still young enough to believe
that rabbits lay eggs. We can turn
his work into play and his play into
work, keeping we'll in mind the edu-
cational value of his unconscious &C.
tivities, and by careful oversight per-
vert a game of tag into a preparation
for the business of life. We a eX-
pertinent with him according to the
dictates of hundreds of rival authori-
ties. He is in a measure at our mercy,
though nature fights hard for him,
safeguarding him with ignorance of
our mode of thought, and Indifference
to our point of view.
The education of my childhood was
embryonic. The education Of today
is exhaustive.
Training for maternity" was an
unused phrase, and the short views
of life, more common then than now,
would have robbed it of it's SAVIOR.
Training for citizenship had, so far
as we were concerned, no meaning
whatsoever. A little girl was a little
girl, not the future mother of the
race. or the future savior of the re-
public. One thing at a time. There
fore, no deep significance was attached
to our possession of a doll, no con-
Germ was evinced over u future
handling of a vote. d.
A happy childhood did not neces-
sarily mean a childhood free from
proudly accepted responsibility. There
are few things in life SO dear to girl
or boy as the chance to turn to good
account the splendid self-confidence
of youth.
The theory hat school work must
appeal to a child'S f~luctuating tastes,
must attract a child's involuntary at
t~ention, does grievous wrong to the
rising generation.
Let us boldly suppose that a child
is not interested-and he may con-
Ceivably weary even of films-is it
then optional with him to be or not
to be d~isorderly? And what is the
effect of his disorder on other chill
dren whose tastes may differ from
his own?
am aware that it is a dangerous
thing to call kindness sentimental;
but our feeling that children have a
right to happiness, and u sincere
effort to protect them from any APP
prOach to pain, have led impercep-
tibly to the elimination from their
lives of many strengthening infu-
ences.
The rights of children include the
doubtful privilege of freedom from
restraint, and the doubtful boon of
shelter from obligation. 1t seems
sweeter and kinder to teach a child
high principles and s~teadfastness of
purpose by means of symbolic games
than by any open eXaction. Uncon-
scious obedience, like indirect taxa
ton, is supposed to be paid without
strain. Our feverish fear lest we of
fend against the helplessness of child
hood, our feverish concern lest it
should be denied it's full measure of
content, drive us, burdened as we are
with good intentions, past the border
land of wisdom. If we were less
winning soft, less amiably mild, we
might see more clearly the value of
standards.
nNnEc NMuN MEpE nnND