Oxford eagle. (Oxford, Lafayette Co., Miss.) 1876-current, 1921-10-27

hard and unlovely but such as it was
inc youth was permitted to escape it.
And over all phases of the boys daily
life the parson and those interchangeable
Ilieutenants of his, the deacons and the
tithing men, kept strict watch.
Whatever it's shortcoming, the early
New England town was an ideally
,many-sided school wherein to educate
| in fact as well as in name, the three
fold nature of boy. The range OF
activities was limited and the stage
was small; but for that narrow thea
tire the training of the boy was strik-
iingly complete.
| All the forces of the community
united in giving the child the fullest
and most complete education that the
times afforded. But as we study the
educational efficiency of the early New
England town, we point with pride to
the modern palatial school building
of today and bid the awed spectator
observe how much more we do for the
child than our great-grandfathers did.
In many ways, of course, we do. In
richness of school curriculum, in splen-
did building and equipment, we are far
ahead; but were we to meet to-day's
conditions as comprehensively-co
isidering modern needs and resources,
las those povertystricken forefath-
ers fulfilled the demands of their
crude time, we would have to show
many other things than piles of brick
and stone, many educational forces
other than those now active. / some
times fear that too many of our mo-
dern, schools are like the famous char
acterization of university: ga place
that must be full of learning, since
the freshmen bring so much wisdom
in and the seniors carry so little out"
But | would not, if | could, turn
back the hands of the clock, so to-
speak to those narrow Puritan days.
Better an hour of rich, modern COM
plexity than a century of that narrow
Puritan life. The growth of our multi
form resources, the marvellous inven-
tons that force nature to do the bid
ding of tiny man, our intellectual
breadth, our industrial power and
fabulous wealth have been a glorious
evolution and would be an unmixed
blessing if education, in the true mean
ing of that term, had advanced with
corresponding speed Emphatically
however, it has not kept pace with
our rapidly differentiating social needs
and if we do not appreciate this lag
ging of genuine education, if the faith
ers and the mothers, the church, and ala
the members of the modern commun-
ity, do not realize that they are re-
sponsible on a large scale, as the
Puritans felt themselves responsible
on far smaller scale, for
the all-round development of all boys
and girls, then modern progress will
eliminate, and at the same time will
come to an end, in rank materialsim.
Did some ancestral ghost appear to
US to-day and summon courage to
whisper: Where do you educate your
children's morals, where their hands,
where their bodies, where their sense
of duty to the state, where their abil-
ity to take efficient share in all the
modern complexities of our modern
democracy" What could you and I
say? Could we point to the homes of A
merica and say there's where the boys
and girls are taught right ideas con-
corning truth, honesty, unselfishness,
temperance, and all the other virtues?
Could we point to the homes of Amer
lea as christian and God-fearing and
say that there's where the boys and
girls are taught religion which teaches
them to look beyond themselves and
the material things of life to pure,
ideals? Could we point to our schools
as institutions where, not only the in
tellect is developed, but civic respon-
sibility taught and the moral teach
ings of the home supplemented? Could
we point to the church with its hun
dred of sects struggling, often in quite
un-christian spirit, over mere denomi-
nation, too often preaching creed in
stead of deed, and say that the church
! is fulfilling its God-given mission and
is equipping our children to live COM
pletely? No, fear that we should
have to answer that none of these
agencies acting singly or collectively
| function SO as to educate the child
to live completely.
Because of this failure to live up to
our opportunities and to meet the
needs and demands of the ace. the