The Nezperce herald. (Nezperce, Idaho) 1900-1957, 1924-01-10
OH, AMERICAl

schools or America W nat part W
our community life deserves more at
tention than they do5 And when u
comes to retrenchment, win we not lei
go everything else before we close
down the schoolss Certainly these
schools of ours are very near and dear
to the Americans. But is that, after
all, 40 great an argument for fed.
eral bureau Of education, cabinet
department of education, as the edu,
cational propagandists would have us
believed
"It cannot be sidetracked," they
are shouting. 1.-THE pressure on con-
gress to pass it is overwhelming. Ev-
cry patriotic and almost every frater-
nal order is behind it. Churches in
dorse it. Teachers, schools and col
leges, alumni associations and under.
graduates are for it. Chambers Of
commerce and civic organizations de-
mand it Parents want it. School or
ganizations want it, Almost every
one who knows anything about it
wants it. And congress is not apt to
turn deaf ear to so deep-seated a de-
sire, SO strong feeling that the time
has come when the United States
should do as much for education as it
does for wheat and corn and pigs and
eattlei''
There you have it. If we have, in
moment of mental alteration, given
bureau TO this and another to that,
we must, Of course, do no less for tho
schools. If we have made one false |
step, we must straightway take six or
ten moro because of it. Thus does
Bureaucracy force itself upon us.
We are forgetting are we not, in
this mad orgy of resoluting in associa
-tions and church societies, that the
schools have always been the closest
Of our public institutions to the peo
Pile. They were intended to be close,
TO BIO creatures of the community. But
wo have gradually let them steal away
from us.
First. il was to county supervision.
because the educators argued that it
was deadly to have our schools man
aged by 30 Impractical lot as the
lsual board Of trustees.
And then we saw some counties pro
PRESSING fastor than others, some back.
ward, some unsatisfactory, and we .
.ded out for courses of study prel
eribed by the state and for state
eacher eertification and that sort of
hing. The teaching fraternity pre-
erred this. It was irksome to be d.
sctly responsible to parents in dis
rict, troublesome to have education :
liked up in county elections They
that aloofness from the peo- .
lie achieved in the state unit.
But even this has not satisfied them. I
'ow they want to get education away I
ntirely from the wrangles of state
ampaigns and state legislation and
in national system. They
ant to reply to disgruntled parents
hen schools seem to fail: "This is
lie national course of study we arc {
,ing Take 1t up with Washington ].
you don't hike it. 1t is the last =
ord in education. - I.
They know, these educators, that y
o school management is pretty thor bl
lghly out of the hands of the people sc
soon as il is enthroned in a Wash us
gton department. Even though its to
'wers there are only recommendation an
d advisory, they know they win be /,
ny real because they win bear the y
amp of the federal government And :
ely feel sure no educational issue win ~
70 in elections important enough to
persede the other issues; that with 70
federal department the management al
the schools will in very fact be in
. hands of the pedagogic profession, We
} educational hierarchy. They say til
~ want all this in the name of eff. tn
iency and better America for our NJ
ldren, but what If the result be on VI
greater expense and more opportun. tn
for passing the buck of response
ity along the already long lines of
ication.
The tendency is all wrong, and the
ng that is pushing US in the wrong
ection is this glorious hurrahing of
clubs and associations which in.
9 speakers to speak and then, part
out of courtesy partly under the
Il of the conviction that rises from
ring one side of question only,
very greatly influenced by the
ntion of the sacred schools and the
owed children. and such things, feso-
. and resolute and resolute US to
truetion.
md the strange part Of it all is,
+ these same clubs which push US
into bureaucracy are, when they
shown the growing burden of gov
mental affairs, the very ones that no
lutte also against bureaucracy. Oh, 9
ericai-Editorial from the Boise ~ ~
tesmsp. ~