Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-16
MOTHERS URGED
TO TEACH CHILDREN
Former Bryn MaWr Educator
Sees Home as Answer
to Crime Wave.

Mothers should teach their small
children in their homes, save where it
Is necessary for them to go out to work
to earn a livelihood and any mother
who will place child in school merely
because she is unable to control 1t is
"a greater menace to the country than
q forger or pickpocket," in the opinion
of Miss Ella Frances Lynch, educator,
of Minerva, N Y. who conducted her
own schools for 20 years in Atlantic
City and Bryn Mawr, Pa. She is the
author of three books on educational
topics.
Miss Lynch in an interview recently
pictured this educational set-up as
desirable:
Parents should teach. their children
to read and write before sending them
to school.
Religious Education Needed.
Obedience and religious education
should be taught in the home from the
earliest years.
A child must be taught duties as well
as its rights.
Children, in the home and after the
age of in the schools, should be taught
economy.
A desire for knowledge should be
stimulated in the child, as there is no
such thing as natural hatred for
learning. This is merely cultivated.
Schooling in the~home by the parents
for short time each day would benefit
small children more than a. day in
school,
Children must be taught concentra-
ton. and concentration is doing as
you are told, n1inding your own business
and keeping at your work until it is
finished"
History and geography. are taught at
present at the wrong time. Miss Lynch
maintains, as children have no concept
of the importance of time in the life
of the nations nor of distance.
Miss Lynch, who is In Washington,
staying at the Burlington Hotel in the
interests of the fourth International
Congress on Family Education to be
held at Liege. Belgium, from August
to 4. is the founder of the International
League of Teacher Mothers and says
she has been in communication with
$4,000 mothers, representing $4,000
children, In various parts of the world.
Properly instructing parents to teach
their children in the home, so that
they will be able to read and write when
they go to school and know the funda-
mentals OF obedience and the value of
property and economy, are the aims in
MISS Lynchs program. she explains.
This method of pursuing education.
she believes, provides the solution of
the so-called Crime wave" in the United
States. The presidential crime commits
sion, she asserts, should be abolished
as ''an utterly futile thing" contending
that the remedy lies in the home.
ANY woman who can learn to use a
cook book can learn to use right and
simple methods of instruction in the
home, Miss Lynch says.
IF We can set right a child for the
first seven years of its life we can do
away with the crime wave" Miss Lynch !
said today. I'VE could save millions of |
dollars If the parents would properly !
care for their children, for we could |
do away with large numbers of prisons |
JailS and asylums. The progress of
crime is fairly regular and constant. |
The disobsdient 3-year-old is the defiant
7-year-old. BY IA he is incorrigible and
by 81 he is jail bird
Miss Lynch insists that there are
~multitudes of worthless school books"
and says that "the field is monopolized
by the psychologists"
The words "I don't know" are not
taught to children these days, Miss
Lynch says. adding, "They are so afraid
OF silence that they are taught to make |
some kind of an answer even If only a
guess"
Recalls Own School Methods.
Miss Lynch recalled some of the
methods used in her own schools: No
reports, no marking system, no exami-
nations, but each child taught economy.
the value of property and made to
attempt to do the best possible. Her
schools, she said. lacked erasers and
waSte-paper baskets, in an effort to
make the children thoughtful and
avoid mistakes, for no pages we're per-
mitted to be torn from note books
which retained the mistakes that were
made.
After all" she said. schooling is a
real, not a theoretical, training for life"