St. Paul tidende. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1902-1928, 1919-07-25
at JOHN EDGAR.
Frit oyersat at Frede Westergaard.

e+Sa-S 80 ss4-E FCD
some Of our beloved brethren seem
willing to do so.
1t would be a great pity if the
child of Scandinavian parents should
be unable to read the literature Of
his ancestors in the original. One
feels a certain unpleasant surprise
in meeting the on or the daughter
of a Dane who. says frankly that he
does not know either the speech or
the literature which proudly claims
the ballad Of Valdemar, and Queen
Dagmar, one who must read Beou.
ulf in translation and who can Meth
'er enjoy the comedies of Holberg
nor the modern poems of Johannes
|J.grgensen, to whoms Elverhpi is Z
dead letter, and Der var en- Gang
seems to be III a dead language.
Similarly, the American Of Swedish
descent who cannot read Selma La
gerlgf's books in their own language
lis to be pitied; and the Norwegian
whose American-born child must
read Tbsen's Brand in an. English
translation has not done his duty.
TO force the children of bi-lingual
parents to read only one language is
to limit at once the scope of their
minds and, to place great obstacles
in the way Of their cultural pro-
'gress. .
Personally, / should be very glad
IF [ had been taught, when young,
the language which my great-grand-
father must have known-the Gae-
lie; I should indeed feel a very
lonely man if | had not been taught
the language brought into my fami-
Fly earlier by a French ancestor. The
Gaelic, nearly everybody will say,
Iwould have been useless; from a
practical point Of view this is true,
but there seems something wrong
and anomalous in ones not knowing
Ia word of the Celtic speech that
conserved a literature-primitive it
lis true-which cannot be a%ppreciat-
led translated into an alien tongue, a
language which even before the ad-
vent Of Christianity and the institu-
tion Of chivalry %consecrated, as nc
other pagan language did, the best
ideals Of romantic love.
If the influence Of American
thought and ideals is so weak. in
our system of public education that
our children cannot be trusted tc
know a foreign language and remain
Americans, something is so wrong
in our educational system that il
needs immediate and scientific at.
tention. The one great difficulty
with most of our directors Of educa.
tion is that they have ceased to think
deeply. The mind of a teacher i,
1.-THE most subtle and delicate thing in
,creation, except the soul of a child
Tor a violin string. The teacher wla
has spent many years in his vocation
or avocation either becomes so hare
and crystallized that he would readi
ly suffer. martyrdom in order t
|avoid the effort Of scientific think
ling, which might mean the throwing
away of the outworn formula h,
IIhos painfully acquired; or he be
comes that most enviable Of al
creatures, the possessor Of the plasti,
Imind. The teachers who fall int
1.-the bigoted outcry against the per
seryation Of. modern foreign lang
~ s%IEG& GyGSgELLEsTF&4& - SAET 80
uages IN u system of education
have either become too tired t
think, too machine-like not to follow
the path Of least resistance, or to-
servile to what seems. to.be a mo
mentary current Of misguided pub
lic opinion.
In The United States, there al,
two dangers that we have mo-. /,
!, fear: lack Of thought and lack 8;
knowledge. To these dangers ma,
he added a lesser-the lack 81 en-
enlargement for those beauties o
Tart and literature which make. lie,
not only pleasant but endurabl.
There IS not an Italian peasant
one Of ! class 8 utterly despised i,
1.-The lovers Of the Almighty Dollar