The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-01-15
School Room
in Home Is
Not Perfect
Child Misses Contacts
vitality Necessary in
Later Life.
BY GRETTA PALMER
Times Special Writer

- | 4 w 4 OANAA1 Oc~AAs 49,
~ ents the right to remove their
small offspring bodily from the
school system established by the
state and to conduct their education
in the home? The answer to this
question, on the statute books, was
NO" until recently. Now, a prece-
dent which answers Yes" has been
established by the school board
committee of Vineland, N. j., to the
delight of Mr.. and Mrs. Arthur j.
Smart of that town.
For two years the Smart children
have been four small bones Of con-
tention between the truant officers
and their parents, who refused to
send them to any school but offered
to prove their own ability to act as
parent-educators in the home. Mr..
and Mrs. Smart finally won.
We should say that the small
Smarts stand a splendid chance Of
receiving a thorough scholastic edu-
cation. Parents interested enough
in the instruction of their young to
go enthusiastically to bat for their
principles should make persistent
and imaginative teachers.
Incentive for Efficiency
And since the school board prob
ably will be in a position to step in
at any time they suspect neglect,
there is an added incentive for
keeping the youngsters at least as
we'll inforend as members of their
proper grade.
Parents of intelligence and erudi-
ton have tried the experiment be-
fore and with interesting results.
There have been child prodigies
whose progress into the upper
reaches Of learning at the age of II
was SO marked that it would have
been absurd for the state to insist
on further tuition. There have been
governess- trained children who put
their elders to shame when they
finally left the home school room
for the campus. Oh. children can
be taught at home, all right!
Miss COmpanionship
But certain elements of the nor
NAL child's education have been left
out. They are elements which ap-
pear in no school curriculum, but
they have at least as great a value
in preparing one for life as sound
grounding in Cicero and calculus
though these are more likely to
come in handy than We sometimes
think
The little boy Or girl who is
brought up at home misses all the
rough-and-tumble of the school
yard, the exhilaration Of rivalry be-
tween the sixth grade and fifth on
the basketball court on a crisp au-
tumn day, the valuable little point
ers on social contacts which a nor
NAL school life would afford
He has no chance to learn how tc
get on with a group, because he is
never a part Of any group, except
the very special and intimate one
of the family. And you can not
lead a happy or well-balanced life
without at some later day having tC
poke your nose out into the WORLD
and find out how people act toward
you when there is no relationship
to make things smooth
Home Has Limitations
The small members of the Smart
family have Slight edge on other
children who will be educated at
home if the precedent is widely fol-
lowed. They at least are members
of a family large enough so that
they will have a chance to Learn
some of the lessons of getting on
with their kind, which we normally
have thrust on us at school. But
they still do not seem to have been
put in an enviable position by their
parents triumph.
1t is enormously difficult to win
preparation, within the confines of
home, for a life as dynamically
and insistently social as the world
IN which we live today. If we were
little Smart we would rather go to
school.