New-York tribune., 1920-02-09
By
Hcypood Broun

get him bright vest and derby hal
and let him pretend to be a Sidewalk
speculator. He might be encouraged
to demand one pin a day from each o1
his parents for admission to the nur.
sery and two pins, Of course, on Sat,
urdays and holidays. Also, arrange
ments could be made with some reli.
able brokerage house to have him sup
piled with the ticker tape each day.
/ In discussing the veXed question ol
education W. H. P. seems to have
found much sound comment in Floyd
Dell's "Were You Ever a Child?"
"She has read to tatters," she write,
concerning her small daughter, "all OF
Howard Pyle's King Arthur series
and his Robin Hood her Jungle Book,
her Treasure Island She adores
Gogol ('Taras Bulba) and G. W. Bir.
mingham, Andrew Lang and Selma
Lagerlof, Dunsany and W. W. Jacobs!
She has read with delight the divert
ing experiences of Huckleberry Finn
Of Tom Sawyer and of Anna Howard
Shaw. At my suggestion q very sell
dom suggest she read (and read with
appreciation the chapters The Child
as Artist and The Artist as Child in
Floyd Dell's Were You Ever a Child 2
and she may read it all If ever she
wants to.
''You see, she is a not unconscious
victim of our rule-of-thumb educa-
tional system which, as have remarked
elsewhere, apparently aims at the
highest Quantitative production with
the least possible variation, hopper
after hopper-full of two-legged autom-
alta with wooden heads. She attends
the best private school we could find
but it must, Of course, keep in line
with the public school toward tina,
noble goal, the final shaping process
of the neat wooden heads to fit COLLEGE
entrance requirements, preceding theil
perfecting through four years more OF
buffing and polishing in college itself
Our child suffers, as do we watching
her. She leads her class, which would
seem to prove that her head is being
shaped most excellently according tx
pedagogic schedule. Appearances are
however, deceitful and more goes or
within that innocent-appearine store
house Of facts and fancies than he1
teachers wot of. In thus far. never
theless, is the system doing it's wors
(hence, IN topsy-turvy educationdon
It's best and noblest) that she feels ant
is being made wretched by the shapine
processes of it's clumsy tools. Sh.
! already hates Shakespeare hates
every lovely English poem chosen TO,
classroom vivisection, hates Julius
Caesar, together with his language anc
all his works. She has finished reor
raphy, having hated it thoroughly ane
knowing now nothing whatever about it
She is losing her fine native sense O.
observation in order dutifully to se,
only what her teachers consider i'm
portant. She writes hours at tim,
on her own typewriter stories, poems
plays, but wept yesterday when i
came time for her to write her dali,
short theme, the following attractiv
subjects having been given the chill
dren to choose from: MY Ideal Room
How l Baked a Cake "A Soldier
Soldier The Delayed Picnic and 9TH
Party Dress Should Like
"And we cannot wholly save her
We are not rich enough to have TO
her the sort of tutors we should wish
men and women. for example, Of sucl
types as Huxley, William Morris. Ellie,
Key, st. Gaudens and James Whitcom1
Riley. You see, the prototypes of m,
faculty. are not even living, unles
Ellen Key, and I could do without he
the most easily
mo. she must 60 step by ste,
through the devitalizing process i
which my generation, too, wss sub
jected. How we'll recall my collier