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6 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.