Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1921-09-13
SCHOOL DAYS.

The Grand Forks schools are open for the year.
All over the country schools have opened or are
about to open. Vacation is over and the children
who have been running loose through the summer
months have been assembling again in class rooms
to continue their studies which they have taken up
in the past, and this year, as,sin other years, several
million children will for the first time become in
mates of the school rooms!
There is something impressive in the march OF
the. children to school on the opening day. Not al
Ways,ls the journey undertaken willingly. There is
the natural regret at the close Of the vacation which
has been productive of many pleasures. Yet on the
whole the youngsters are a&happy lot. The little
ones who are going to school for the first time arc
entering on a new world of wonders. They are GU
rious and expectant, eager for the new experience,
and feel a sense of Importance in the evidence Of
their progress to maturity. And the older pupils
also have something new to encounter, for their
work will differ from what it has been. There will
be new lessons, new experiences, something to slim
|ulate the imagination and to crafty the desire for
the new and untried.
In a short time these children will be the men
and women of the country. They will receive inl-
|pressions in their school days which will never be
iobliterated. Character will be formed, latent ability
will be discovered, and a great deal will be done to-
ward shaping lives.
There is no subject which is more often and
more generally discussed than the work of the
schools, and scarcely anything which is more severe
ly criticised. This general discussion is natural, for
there is no subject which touches the family more
closely. And it is natural that there should be criti-
cism, for finding fault is easier to most of us than
most other things are.
If it were possible to assemble all the critici,ns
of the schools which are made, and to eliminate
those which are balanced by criticisms of exactly the
opposite nature, we should probably have not much
left. For instance, we are told on the one hand that
the schools teach too many fads and isms and olo-
gies, to the neglect Of the simpler essentials. And
on the other hand we are told just as frequently, and
with as great emphasis, that the schools are not
keeping pace with the times. and that there are
needed more Of these very things which are de-
nounced BY others. If we should go down the list
we should find that most of the criticisms heard are
offset in just about this manner by other criticisms
from exactly the opposite standpoint. If WE should
strike out all these offsets we should have so little
left that on the basis of a mathematical method we
should conclude that the schools are just about
perfect.
The schools are not perfect, any more than any
other human agency is perfect. But it is quite pos
slble that they are just about as near perfect as our
extremely composite and complex society demands
or will permit: The stream cannot rise higher than
its source, and the work of popular education cah-
not proceed very far in advance of OF lag very far
behind the settled opinion of the community.