Evening star., 1930-11-30
Fifty Years Ago
In The Star

Last Saturdays Star uttered, IN the
vigorous words Of OLIVIA" says a let
- ter signed by
More OF the STACY" and print
School System. Novenbar e% IN aTe 81 9'1I isss' n
some terrible truths concerning the
public school system. Boston perfected
that system up to its present adaptable
ity to numbering the bodies and minds
and souls Of children. She held on to
it until she found it was driving her
children to idiocy, mania, death, or an
attenuated and useless life. Now, spite
her strong prejudice in favor of ideas
that originate in Boston, she is taking
the back track with celerity; she is
shortening and simplifying book lessons
and introducing physical and industrial
training. hope we shall not wait to
see our children falling into strange
comas, or dying, raving Of algebra, or
developing the intellect at the expense
Of morals, manners and physique, be-
fore we follow Boston in her new de-
parture. The moral education which
children in our public schools give each
other Is such that many good parents
prefer to risk ignorance for their chill
dren rather than the knowledge Of evil
learned at school.
THANK God! our next President has
the good heart and clear head to have
seen twenty-three years ago the right
order Of education. In an address to
Hiram College in 1857 Gen. Garfield
said: The student should study first
what he most needs to know; the order
Of his needs should be the order Of his
work Unprovided with that instinct
which enables the lower animals to re-
ject the noxious and to select the
nutritive, man must learn even the
most primary truths that minister to
his self-preservation.' School commit
tees will applaud that undefended and
indefensible outrage upon the laws of
physical and intellectual life which
keeps q little child sitting In silence in
vain attempt to hold his mind to the
words Of a printed page for six hours
out of the twenty-four. Thus are
Squandered those thrice precious years
when the child Is all ear and eye, when
its eager spirit, with Unsuitable curl
osity, hungers and thirsts to know the
what and the why Of the world and its
wonderful furniture. We silence its
sweet clamor by examining its hungry
mind with words, empty, unmeaning
words. It asks bread and we give It q
stone. It Is to me a perpetual wonder
that any child's love of knowledge sur
wives the outrages Of the school house."
4 Il
In its issue Of November a, 1883,
The Star reprints from the ct. Louis
Republican the following parody en-
titled Poker:
ITO draw, or not to draw, that Is the
question.
Whether It's safer in the player to take
The awful risk of skinning for q
straight,
Or. standing , pat. to raise 'em all the
And thus, by blufang. get it. To draw
to skin;
No more-and by that skin to get full
Or two pair, or the fattest bouncin'
kings
That luck is heir to-'tis a consumma-
DevOutly to be wished. To draw. to
To skinl perchance to bust-aye. there's
the rlbl
For in that draw Of three what cards
may come
When we have shufiied on the uncer-
tain pack,
Must give us pause. There's the re-
spect
Which .I,s makes calamity cfa bOb-taiied
For who would bear the overwhelming
The reckless straddle. the wait on the
The i1scienos I.:.G e pat hands. and the
That patient marit Of the hlHf,er tkss.