The Cordova daily times., 1920-11-17
NOVEMBER IS, 1920.
A SQUARE DEAL FOR TEACHERS

The reopening of the public schools affords a fitting occasion to bespeak a square deal for those who teach in them. In the past parents have often judged them un- fairly and have been far too ready to blame them for conditions that are not blameworthy.
 The commonest and perhaps the " weakest indictment against school teachers is that they do not make lessons interesting.
 Most parents have heard the mis- quoted proverb to the effect that there is no royal road to geometry and from it they have reasoned that all other branches of learning can be approached by royal roads, broad and easy and pleasant to childish feet. Thus they often argue, remem- bering only the pleasing and prank ful episodes of their own years in the schoolroom.
 
 squarely in the face and to admit to ourselves, to our children and to their teachers that large part ot elementary schooling is, and from it's very nature must be, sheer drudg- cry? Is it reasonable to suppose that healthy young animal whose main interest is in batting averages and league standings can derive much real joy or pleasure from French verbs, or the Bridge of Asses, or the bridge that Caesar built. Is it not easier to believe that a youngster who really revels in such learning has a morbid streak that he would be better off without? And yet no school work is so dry or tedious that it is not commended to him in terms as flattering a" he might him. self employ in trading Mich Carter thriller to the boy across the aisle.
 Misguided attempts to make schooling interesting at any cost have done more than anything else to sap the Vigor of our educational system. The truth to which we stubbornly close our eyes is that a large part of the essential founda- tional work in the elementary schools is not only not interesting but cannot be made so. Sooner or later this fact must be recognized and taken into account. Drudgery cannot be so bilded or bespangled as to make it anything else; nor is this the honest way to get it at tackled and mastered
 Let us frankly admit that many drudgery and hold little or nothing to a childs interest or imagination They must be studied doggedly not because they are pleasing or stimu- lating but because they are neces- sary; and the only way to learn them is by the outlay of much hard work and intense concentration.
 Leading a boy to believe that everything he is expected to learn is attractive and pleasant is a sub- terfuge that defeats it's own ends. Soon enough the lad sees for himself that he had been misled, and his natural resentment is thereby awak- ened. It is far better to admit at the outset that certain studies are difficult and irksome and must be laboriously mastered, because with out such knowledge further progress is impossible, than it is to play them up as fascinating indoor sports for lusty youngsters who know perfect ly well that they are nothing of the sort
 Foreign critics of our common school system are practically unani- nous in charging that we are over- anxious to make education a pleas and diversion and refuge at any cost to allow it to become the hard, un- teasing grind ;. that most really learned men have found it. Our na-