Evening star., 1925-02-25

the educational world. Things are
better than 1 supposed. Perhaps one
ought to know everything, but one
does not, does he? Therefore the
above letter was most informative to
| me, and I believe 1T will be to many
others who have been so busy in their
| own walks of life that they have not
had time to investigate the modern
trend of education.
It is true enough as Mrs. Bassler
says, that I had been looking upon
education Of the older order when
wrote that "the four main divisions
Of learning since school days are
about as follows: % How to earn
| a living; (2) the conduct of life;
(3) finance, and (D health
This was prefaced, it will be re-
| called, by the statement:
When a man is 10 or Is years out
of school and college one day he is
likely to ask himself some such ques-
tion as the following: Now that
have been out about as long as l was
in, what have / learned since l left?"
Therefore l feel that what I said
holds true for all of us old fellows
| who did have to struggle with "amo"
and exc 'amat," and pore hopelessly
over logarithms and assorted alge-
braic formulae, when all the time we
doors playing tag!
To all of us, therefore, who feel
| that we wasted many precious mo-
ments bounding Germany-now that
the boundaries have been somewhat
altered-it comes as quite fresh
news of sunshine character that the
schools of today are no longer for
| malistic
1t must be almost fun TO go to
| school today, Think OF it, all we
| oldtimers: A pupil is human be-
ing!
In my school days a child was
| something to be hurried through
| grade after grade, and we always
suspected that our teachers heayed
| sundry sighs of relief when we dis
appeared
The teachers never understood us,
and never made much effort to, as
far as we could make out. Perhaps
we were considered as fellow human
| beings In the discussions at the in
stitutes," but in classroom we loomed
up as problems"
Now all that is changed, Mrs. Bass
| Ter tells me, and I, for one, am tre-
| mendously pleased to hear 1t. Let me
quote her last lines again: >:
I'VE are no longer teaching sub
tects; we are teaching chill
dren, and trying to help them to
adapt themselves to life in school as
preparation for the larger life out
side of school"
The kindergarten, the Montessori
method, and the various experimental
schools in this country always have
fascinated me. And this movement
| toward really better schools and
teaching Is worldwide, / am begin
ming to learn.
In the March number OF the Forum
is most interesting article by Mar
| tha Gruening. entitled Youths Own
| School," in which she describes a school
| for girls and boys in the forest of Thu
ringia, conducted in accordance with
modern experimental ideas, the prin-
| ciple of which is that pupils should
all be members of great family, in
which the independence of each mem
| Der Is sacred thing"
These schools are, the author points
out, as the name Landerziehungshe
implies, '1and schools and land homes,
| in a sense that few of our schools are,
even when situated in the country,
and they represent, with other
| things, not only a back -to-nature'
movement in education, but also what
might be called a ack-to-youth'
movement
| All! Back to youth! That is what
| interests me. The child is father to
| the man, and, as such, deserves equal
| consideration. If the child in school
| today is coming into his own 1 am
| mighty glad to hear about it, Thank
! you, Mrs. Bassler!