Belt Valley times. [volume] (Armington, Mont.) 1894-1977, 1923-02-08

with farm life and envious of her town friends. The result: either
The county unit system tends toward extravaganza in school
management. The idea seems to prevail that each school should
get all they can out of the county board and to spend every cent of
it because what is left returns to the county unit treasury. As a
board, how to deal with the demands for free transportation to and
from school until 1T has appeared, to US outsiders that people are
demanding payment for sending their children to school.
A chief argument of the supporters of this system is that it
gives to every child a nine-months' term of school. 1t has been our
nine full months of school with a reasonably good teacher and only
ten or a dozen fellow pupils to complete the same work that the
step from grade , to grade requires, and that q six-months' term of
strong physique, a clear brain, and an ability to Study far superior r
to the average town pupil. Besides this he has been learning in
chief of which is the ability to stay with an allotted task until its
completion and not grow up as too many city boys do with the idea
that fifteen minutes spent in raking a lawn is too hard for a per-
son of his attainments and too undignified for his friends to wit
ness.
Patched trousers mean nothing to the boy who is working,
who is interested in his work and who feels the dignity of labor,
but to the boy raised TO nine months OF school, a boy scout vaca-
~anathema.
We Americans are educating our boys away from work and
the number of conspcuousy foreign names appearing in the high
places of industry and statecraft is the answer.
Education is essential to a democracy. Without it the masses
become the prey OF schemng demagogs and democracy is lost We
believe all this and there is no earthly use in dwelling long upon
There must be training of the body, the securing of the proper CO
ordination between hands and brain. The skilled mechanic is a
better educated man than the college graduate who has learned ev-
erything but how to earn a living.
that it fails to find room In the curriculum for time to teach boys
and girls the dignity of labor and the inclination to work, and it
After graduation comes disiiusionment and there must be a
complete reconstruction of the boys ideas and manner of living or
his ship soon goes upon the rocks.
Therefore we believe that a rural system of six months school
and six months reasonably hard labor on the farm will produce a
better type of citizens than ten months of school made necessary
because child welfare laws and advanced civilization have rem
dered society unsafe when the whole band of children, immune
against arrest or punishment, unframed to work and seeking
amusement or excitement are turned loose on q long suffering pub
lie. The school has come to be a place OF confinement for the
young ones SO that their parents can get rest
Really, without Joking, is it not true that the man who re-
quires his son to work is frowned upon by our modern society The
idea seems to be not to let a boy work but to give him an oppor-l
tunity to learn every bad habit existing.
Don't let him soil his hands with honest tot, but keep him IN
ideness nine months in the year. Whe7 eohci y mt end that
spark of manhood comes to the surface and the call Of the country
lures him TO the farm and its honest work the heat OF the flrst day
and the strain to hs soft unaccustomed muscles drives him back