Mexico Missouri message. (Mexico, Audrain County, Mo.) 1899-1918, 1916-05-18
DISCUSSING The
SCHOOL SYSTEM
BY Herbert Pryor.

some interesting and far reaching II
changes are being made in the school
systems of the country, with which
parents should acpuaint themselves,
if they are to be able to guide and
direct the education of their children.
These changes have to do with the
subject matter that is taught, the
method by which It is taught and |
the organization of the school itself.
Parents are already aware of the
great changes that have been made
in the schools in recent years but few
realize how much greater changes
must come the next few years, if the !
schools are really to serve the major
ity of the boys and girls of a democ- |
racy. Dean Russell of Teachers Col
lege, one of the worlds foremost
authorities on educational questions,
recently made the statement that in
the next ten years fifty per cent of
all the things now taught in our
schools would be thrown out and that
their places would be taken by subject
matter more vitality connected with
the life activities of boys and men
and women. These changes will be
FASTENED by the changed social and
economic conditions that must invar-
iably follow the war.
One great problem confronting the
school is looming large in these days
when much attention is being given
to the study of children For years
after the establishment of the city
graded schools, people felt that the
problem of education was practically
solved. The only thing that seemed
necessary was to put thirty, or forty
or fifty children into a room with
teacher, and have them go over
certain amount of subject matter in
year. At the end of the year they
were supposed to have been more or
less benefited by the procedure-in
other words, partly educated. 1t is
now an accepted fact among students
of education that boys and girls can
not be educated by all being taken
through the same grade or the same
course in the same time and at the
same rate of speed. Children differ
greatly in natural ability and in the
rate at which that ability develops.
The ordinary graded school makes
two fatal plumbers that bring meal
culable harm to two large and rather
important classes of children.
1. The pupils who develop slowly
and who do not take readily to the
mastery of books, are rarely provided
for. They drag along in their class
es until they get old enough to drop
out of school, when they leave a
school in which they have spent
years without having received much
in return.
2. The graded school is often
guilty of an even greater blunder in
it's treatment of that class of children
who develop rapidly and who find ii
easy to learn from books. These
children do not have to put forth
their best efforts and hence often fall
into habits of idleness and become
inefficient workers. Many college
loafer of the present day is such be
cause Of the bad habits established
during his early years in the ole
type of school. A child must worl
at his best, to his full capacity. i
S the best educational results are t,
follow.
The above paragraph has state,
g one of the most serious problems con
|. fronting the schools of today. What
J. being done to overcome difticultie
suggested is a question that shout
o interest the parents Of Mexico, Their
are several decided departures in til
II modern school as a result of the e
forts to meet the needs of individu'
n 'AildF'n'