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STRIKING THOUGHTS FOR THINKING TEACHERS
MRS. ZULIENE BALKCOM SUBERS OF BAINBRIDGE READS NOTABLE PAPER BEFORE DECATUR COUNTY TEACHERS’ ASSO
CIATION-DIGGING AFTER FUNDAMENTALS IN PRACTICAL EDUCATION.
HT
[ERE is an address which teachers, par
ents and pupils ought to read and study
I as you would study your grammar. It
deals with revolutionary but imperative
ideas in our educational life.
This strong paper was read before a recent
meeting of the Decatur County Teachers’ As
sociation at Bainbridge, Ga., and the editor of
The Golden Age who was present was so im
pressed with its solid worth that the author,
Mrs. Zaliene Balkcom Subers, was requested to
furnish it for publication:
Education —Its Practical Friend.
Judging from the writings of many promi
nent educators, the “practical” has entered
so little into American education as a whole,
that one cannot handle the subject as a na
tional issue and consider it as practical.
Do not think that I have overlooked the fact
that, right here, tucked away in one corner
of our great W. S. A. —bookkeeping, stenog
raphy and domestic science are taught (thanks
to our teachers and school board —Bainbridge
is way in advance), but as a basis for the whole
idea of public education throughout the coun
try, “the practical idea of a practical fitting
of our boys and girls for a practical life has
not as yet entered in,”
We know that the object of the elementary
school has been to fit the pupils for the high
school, and the high school to fit them for the
college; yet “it is a proven fact that not more
than seven out of every 100 boys and girl?
reach the high school, and not more than five
out of every 100 high school pupils ever en
ter college.”
The Radies’ Home Journal has been making
a study of our public school system, and it
tells some startling facts, showing convincingly
that education such as the tax payer expects
for his money, is not fitting his child for the
practical battle of life
The boy who will only have two years to
devote to study after he leaves the elemen
tary school is taught Latin, Greek and possi
bly French, together with algebra and botany.
How are these studies fitting him for the nec
essity of earning his daily bread, at the end
of two years?
Take a girl who has entered this same school
thinking that she may finish the four years,
but at the end of two is obliged to assist in
the business of bread-winning in her home—
for what is she fitted? Not for bookkeeping,
not for stenography, and not for dress mak
ing, or millinery. Whatever work she may turn
her hand to, it will not bring a large enough
wage to keep her free from the danger of pit
falls that are lying in the path of working
girls in large cities.
Educators throughout this broad land are
rapidly awakening to the needs of the peo
ple—that is, the masses. As an example of
this, last July the National Educational As
sociation went on record as favoring “Exten
sion by congress of plans for training in agri
culture, domestic economy,, and other indus
trial work in various institutions. Greater at
tention in public schools to health of pupils.
To study rural education, city school ad
ministration, vocational education and hygiene
and higher education, including the training
of teachers.
More attention by teachers to the individual
necessities of pupils for a training that will
fit them for a definite occupation in life.
That the school play grounds provide at least
The Golden Age for June 19, 1913
one square rod for each pupil.
That a greater spirit of altruism be inspired
in school work.”
Allow me here to quote from an article writ
ten recently by Wm. H. Mearns, entitled “The
Changing Elementary Schools:”
Some German Wisdom.
One group of Germans asked themselves
questions in substance like the following:
1. Why is a desirable thing like education
so thoroughly hated by children?
.2. Why are schoolmasters, who give -their
lives to the service of others, so little appre
ciated by the ungrateful kinderkins?
3. . Why do boys groan at the thought of
running an errand, who in competitive races
nearly kill themselves sprinting a voluntary
hundred meters?
4. Why do so-called incorrigible children fre
quently turn out to be clever housewives or
men diligent in their business, who stand be
fore kings?
5. Why are children lazy and stupid in
school and at the same time industrious and
quick-witted on the playground?
6. Why do boys construct with ferverish
energy amateur aeroplanes, dynamos, box-kites,
wireless apparatus, batteries, automobiles; why
do they haunt the libraries for books on these
special crafts; why do they pester elders for
helpful information; why do they scan eager
ly the work of professionals and yet have no
interest in algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
physics, chemistry and the other school branch
es that underlie all constructive superiority?
7. Why do girls make such little progress
darning hose until they get babies?
Finally they asked themselves:
Is it possible to harness the marvelous ener
gies of childhood to the performance of tasks
really worth while??
As the result of nearly seventy years of the
mod minute and painstaking investigation, the
Germans came to the conclusion that children
were storage batteries cf enormous potentiality
and that they were always ready to give out
power of great voltage, provided one did not
use a non-conductor. They found also that the
best conductor —one always present—was what
they called das interesse, a word corresponding
to our “interest.” Children will work with
antlike persistence if they have an interest in
the proceeding. Tom Sawyer knew all about
this. And that it is not the line of least resis
tance or the excuse of laziness, any one may
prove by observing a body of youngsters build
a dam in running water. Further, the Ger
mans discovered that child interests were quite
different from adult interests, and therefore the
education of children must not be based upon
what is of interest to adults.
The Doctrine of Interest.
So, one by one, the Germans took their
branches of learning to pieces and remolded
them nearer to the child’s desire. As teachers
they called themselves firmly to account and
found therein the reason for an enormous waste
of child energies and even of child lives, for
the unnatural rigidity of the schools had been
responsible for thousands of -child suicides. In
stantly the school became a place of interests.
At workbench and desk pupils found the ap
peal adroitly put to them as children like it put.
One notable instance was the total reform of
foreign language teaching; what had formerly
been a dry recitation of rules and forms of
grammar became systematized speech—alive,
appealing, easy. Another was the growth of
schools that met the needs of -children whose
interests lay along the line of hand-training and
vocational studies.
The doctrine of interest does not forbid dis
agreeable tasks it encourages them; nor is ev
ery classroom to be a playhouse. The Germans
soon saw that any one will go thoroughly at an
ugly job providing there is something at the
end of it. Promise a boy a seat back of the
catcher for the morrow’s ball game and see
how lightly he goes at mowing the lawn. Even
the washing of dishes—hatefulest of tasks—be
comes a thing for a girl to smile over, provided,
as a reward, she is permitted later to make
layer cake. This illustrates the theory of the
transferred interest that operates and sweetens
the bitterest bits of work. It sends a mother
cheerfully to the unending task of baby-bath
ing ; in the form of two weeks at the seashore
it brightens the eye of the busiest salesgirl
with the sure hope of a home of one’s own it
gives a whole family cheerfulness in daily de
privation; it enables a man to be diligent in
the most distasteful of business. For the sake
of the kiddies at home a plumber will sing at
his work.
One must comprehend this much of the his
tory of the public schools or the basis for all
constructive advancement is lost. Unless it is
understood how deeply our educational insti
tution is rooted in a past and how thorough,
nevertheless, has been the working of criticism
within, one is apt to misjudge the fruits in the
changing character of our public schools. Even
schoolmasters are not always aware of the his
tory noted above and, in consequence, are of
ten found with their backs to the future, claim
ing to see nothing ahead; while some excited
critics of the schools seem to be unaware of
the real progress already made. We are not
surprised, therefore, to see side by side the pub
lic school of yesterday that admirably develops
book interests and the public school of tomor
row that does more than this—the one school
silent as to scholarship, the other roaring with
the noise of hammer and saw and the enthu
siastic voices of happy children at tasks near
to their hearts.
Give a child something that he would rather
do than eat, and you find him possessed with
a desire for knowledge of that particular thing.
Take the boy who is the “loafer,” the chron
ic truant of the school—he is not naturally in
tellectual, but give him a task to do with his
hands —as one writer says:
If you take the loafer out of the Latin class
and make him roll up his sleeves and sweat
while he is fitting two boards together, he will
be captivated. He will even, study a book if
he can see how it connects up with his own
life—now.”
Ex-Pres. Eliot says: “We have lately be
come convinced that acurate work with carpen
ters’ tools, or laths, or hammer and anvil, or
violin, or piano, or pencil, or crayon, or camel’s
hair brush, trains—well, the same nerves and
ganglia with which we do what is ordinarily
called thinking.”
Thus we see that mental discipline means
any hard task succesfully accomplished, but by
fitting the task to the capabilities of the pupil,
we save the nerves of the teachers, the child,
and the parents, and turn out at the end of the
school life a useful American citizen, rather
than a failure, such as, until now, have been
ground out for years past, through the useless
plan of like education for all.