The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-02-17
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 CHILDREN
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By Olive Roberts Barton

Experimental Schools Popular
 Experimnetal schools are ap- bearing like mushrooms all over the country. The reports from the heads are almost rapturous. Children are happier, they are learning more, the old fogey ways have been discarded to limbo and the new order is brightening the world like a June sunrise.
 For the first time probably Ill history youngsters are hurrying to school because they want to go. Try and keep them at home! They can't get away fast enough. hear they are even setting their own alarm clocks for fear of being late.
 Let us of the old guard. who have been advocating changes in the public school system, rub our hands and smile our approval. It Is working out just fine. Tommy Is all agog over being George Washington in the new play, and Dick is wondering what the nov ing picture on farm animals will be like. Betty is to conduct her own class today and the lesson is crossword puzzles on the black board that give the names of capi- tals and cities. Memory review of the months work in geography.
 But They Arc Experiments
 Yes, we smile our approval, we reformers.
 This is something like it," we say. Getting the chairs all scat tered about instead of the long military rows of yore, where a LA -t. 1o al back met with instant rctribution." But suddenly there waits our way, a breath of nostalgia, tho kind that seizes the traveller when he sees the shore line disappear. will 1t be all we expect on the other side?" he says to himself.
 These schools are well-named, Experimental" None of them claim to have reached any stage of perfection. All that any one knows Is that they appear to be decidedly on the right track, but as far as that goes, almost any road would be the right tracks, as long as It leads away.
 Now that we can face new ideas without flinching, l believe, that Q splendid system will be built up in time. That 1t will take time there Is no doubt whatsoever - much time. What was needed was the break and the break has come.
 These thoughts or rather misgiv- ings, occur to me at this time.
 We're COgs in n Wheel
 What if, after few years test, we discover after all that children need certain amount of the stern discipline of other days? It re- mains to be proven, whether chill dren developed entirely through their own impulses, interests and impetus will be finer than those who knew where the dead line lay. Will they be so noble and self re- liant that they won't know what 1t means to buckle down to a hard days work and go through with it?
 The deadly routine of the work aday world seldom gets it's inspira- ton from doing just the things we like in the way we like. It should be so but 1t happens almost never. After all, most of us ara cogs in q wheel. we need a good bit of iron, and good iron, to do our bit. We have to fit somewhere. And we must learn how to fit.
 All these problems bother me. In the new attempt will we go to tho other extreme and will chil- dren grow up with the notion that all work Is q perfect circus? That is where we must be wise and take out of the old system those things that were good, the things that had the word "must" behind them. There Is q safe middle way in edu- cation as with most other things. But perhaps l am needlessly worried. America Is becoming sin cercly education conscious, and that is all that appears to be necessary,