Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1922-11-22
New Character Education.


Under the caption "The New
Character Education" Charles A..
| Selden, has written an article for
the November Ladies' Home Jour
nal. in which he makes a definite
attempt to undo the mischief he did
, in his former article in that Jour
nal traduc1ng the public schools of
Vermont, or, if not actually hold
ing them up to ridicule at least CIV
ing the impression to the country
at large that the Green Mountain
| state was in same class with some
of the illiterate southern states.
Pressure was evidently exerted in
high places by some Of the Vermont
board of education, and as a result
we have included in this new article
a more sensible and intelligent re-
view of the educational status of
the state.
We quote herewith that portion of
the article which refers to the Yer
mont schools as follows:
Vermont, aroused to her short
coming by the disclosures of Car
negie Foundation school survey. is
once more Internationally awake and
doing remarkable things in the i'm
provement of rural school buildings,
the training of teachers and the es-
Enlistment of high schools. She
now has something over sixteen hum
bred teachers of normal school or
training class qualifications, as
against less than seven hundred in
1900. The number of college grad
yates in her teaching force has
doubled. In the same period the leg
islature has increased the appropria
ton for training classes from $4,000
to 100000. There were but thirteen
per cent of the schools and twenty
one per cent of the children of Yer
mont under competent supervision in
1900. There are now competent su-
pefintendents for all schools of the
state.
Most important of all in this rural
state is the work of Miss Rose Lucia
as the supervisor of all the rural
schools She is not only an expert in
education but an expert on boys and
| girls as human beings as well as pu-
pills. The average pay of Vermont
/ teachers has increased to twenty
| three dollars a week. Appropriations
for textbooks have doubled. The
amount provided by the public for
free transportation of children to re-
mote schools has increased ten times.
/ There have been encouraging in
creases in the amounts expended on
new buildings and the renovation of
old ones. High-school enrolment has
! doubled to eleven thousand pupils
over three per cent of the population,
in twenty years.
'We have not arrived yet" says
! Clarence H. Dempsey. the Vermont
| state superintendent. "Like the rest
of the country, we are far from be-
ing educated to the point necessary
to insure our highest welfare. 1t
should be the endeavor of every COM
munity to work together for the re
! moval of every bad spot in their
1 school systems. The best and only
the best is good enough for Vermont
and her children"
One great hope for Vermont, says
i Dorothy Garfield Fisher, who is a
member of the state board of educa-
/ ton. is that it is so full of Yer
monters They have an amazing
i amount of pride in their mountains
and rivers, their villages andl
cities. They will improve, but IN
their own way, and that way is not
to tear down and abandon all that's
is old, but to improve the nd and
I Geddes. the British Ambassador at
4 Washington, once said to, meeting
/ of American educators applies with
perhaps more force to Vermont than
to any other state in the Union: "A
/ system of education to be effective
must grow out of the soil, out of the
Il genius of the people"
4 1t would be as difficult to eradicate
the traditions of Vermont as to re-
move her Green Mountains. TO IL
! lustrate: Two miles outside the vii
lage of Arlington, near the old an
h cestral farm, where Dorothy Cantleld
i Fisher lives and writes her books,
! there is the rural school building IN
which her great-grandfather got his
education. 1t was a most inadequate
:; structure so far as modern school
building standards go. But it had
tradition and, therefore, worth. So
/ the community improved it. They
cut more windows to give the right
! light and ventilation for the children.
! They made it sanitary and built an
addition as large as the original
building, to provide for better class
room work and for training in the
domestic sciences. They put ina
trained teacher who loves children
i because she mas naQ nor OWN. AHu
summers they rent the whole outfit
as a cottage and use the proceeds to
! provide hot lunches fog the school
I children all winter. Every woman
in the community feels it incumbent
upon her to do something for that
! school.
These examples are fairly illustra-
tive of the new spirit in America.
! All together they are the promise
that Will Woods prediction will
come true, and the general country
wide spread of education that he
4 calls for in decade is a vital, indis-
pensable part of this far greater task
of character education.
/ There is even a guess hazarded as
to the time required for reaching the
American charter goal. 1t is not
: really so much of guess >as the
naming of a period long enough to
suggest the magnitude of the work
"Perhaps two hundred years." says
Milton Fairchild. perhaps three
hundred. We need long perspec-
tive"