Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

How often we hear of the Prodigal Son Who wanders ’neath sorrow and shame, Os the hands ever ready to welcome him home, Os the hearts all forgiving again; But go where you will, o’er land, o’er sea, All over this wide, wide world, And never you’ll hear in kind sympathy, A word for the Prodigal Girl. Though pure hath she been from her in fancy up, An angel of beauty and grace, With never a sorrow from life’s bitter cup To sadden her young sweet face, Gompers Calls for Change. Samuel Gompers, the great labor leader, says: “While the public schools and colleges aim only at teaching professions, the greatest need of America, educationally, is the improvement of industrial intelligence and working efficiency in the American youth. We need an educa tional uplift for the good of the boy who will work with the hands, and we not only need to give an educational uplift to craftsmanship, but the school needs the help of the workman and his better work in education. We should real ize better the dependence between our com mon education and our common industries. This can be effectuated only by a system of industrial schools, differentiated from the man ual training schools, which shall actually train workmen for the trades and at the same time give them a broader mental culture.” As we have seen before, vocational educa tion has not as yet been taken up as a national movement, but here and there, scattered at great distances over this country, we find the large cities taking into their regular school sys tems, industrial and vocational training schools, “in which the children study from books, as other boys and girls study, but in addition, they are engaged in work that growing chil dren like —sawing, planing, painting, printing, dress-making, cooking, sweeping, dusting, book binding and typewriting.” New York state has taken the lead in estab lishing vocational schools for “hand-minded” children of the upper grammar grades. With a longer school day they complete a course of instruction that qualifies for entrance to the technical high school. Mr. Frank Lawrence Glynn, principal of the vocational school of Albany, N. Y., says: “It is a novel sight which greets you on enter ing this new sort of institution. You may see the time-keeper reading his time board, hear the clank of the anvil, or see a little girl hardly in her teens fitting a dress on another. After you have visited the boys’ department you ask: “What is the nature of the girls’ work, and you are shown into the sewing room where you see a number of little ladies happy amidst a profusion of sewing machines, cutting tables, needles, thimbles and lingerie of various sorts and kinds.” Many cities in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and away out in Oregon, are making rapid strides in this practical idea of education. As an example of this, in the city of Gary, Ind., the schools have changed completely over to the new idea. Mr. Mearns, who is writing a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post, tells us that — THE PRODIGAL GIRL “All the schools of Gary are what elsewhere are sometimes called special schools. Six years ago Gary was an uninhabited sand dune; at present the population is forty thousand and growing. It has risen magically from a wil derness of sand and scrub-oak to a city with metropolitan features —enormous producing plants; extended thoroughfares of cement lined with office and commercial buildings, superior residences, modern school houses, churches, ho tels and clubs. Industry settled here —the In diana Steel company, the American Bridge com pany, the American Sheet and Tinplate com pany—and the town appeared like an Aladdin esque creation. There were no traditions; therefore Gary schools under Superintendent William A. Wirt resemble the school of tomorrow father than the school of yesterday. The child is the cen tral thing in these schools; how to educate him so that he will be a better informed, a bet ter disciplined and a healthier creature is the sole aim. Programs of study, traditional sub jects and conventional methods of teaching have only this reason for existence. If on test they do not give satisfactory results, out they go. Therefore the whole child is educated here —in his study, in his play, in his amuse ments, in his work. Naturally the schoolday is long—from eight-thirty to four-thirty, eight hours; but the new spirit of harnessing the child’s interests has been so splendidly caught that beys and girls are eager to get into the school house, even on Saturdays and during the summer vacation. Explaining and Doing. Each individual is constantly diagnosed and watched for improvement. There is no look step of classes —quick pupils in any subject are advanced, slow pupils are placed where they can go their pace; foreign children who need English are put where they can get it, but are not necessarily retarded in arithmetic and the other branches; physically backward children are put into outdoor games that bring them up to standard; good workers are allowed to ex press their best at the workbench; and there are no abstract studies —all school subjects are made to relate to the daily life of the child. The changing elementary schools are discov ering the blessedness of work and its great value as an educational motive. Fortunately children love work —if they are caught young enough; and as most of us, rich or poor, must find our happiness eventually in labor, there is no good reason for avoiding it. The saddest thing that can happen to the thousands of fortunate youths who stay in the present-day school un til young manhod and womanhood, is the achievement of permanent physical ineptitude The Golden Age for June 19, 1913 Yet soon as the Tempter hath laid his foul net, Mid pleasure’s gay fashion and whirl, And captures his victim, the world is there set Against the poor Prodigal Girl. A wanderer from home and a stranger abroad, An outcast where’er she may go, With no one to pity or speak a kind word To lighten life’s burden of woe; And though she hath fallen, yet who’s without sin ’Neath yonder’s fair city of pearls? But Jesus is ever the guilty one’s friend He’ll save the poor Prodigal Girl. Oh, would you be willing to throw a glad arm Around her who wanders away, And tell her that Jesus will shield her from harm, To love Him and trust Him today? The angels are watching from yonder * bright home, Oh, let us love’s banner unfurl, And rescue the wanderer where’er she may roam, Some mother’s poor Prodigal Girl. —W. F. Price. Griffin, Ga. if not physical indolence. Twelve to fourteen years of sitting at a desk means almost a sure atrophy of the work instinct. Really healthy ycung persons are bored to indifference, if not disgust, by the unnatural demand upon them. That is one of the obvious attitudes of high school children and of the overgrown boys and girls of the upper grammar grades. Besides which, the mass of really valuable information seems not to hit. It bears so little relation to the things near a youngster’s interests; there is so much explaining, so little doing. ,< “What is a Caucus-race?” said Alice. “Why, said the Dodo, “the best way to ex plain it is to do it.” And thus we see to quote from the “School and Home,” that— “ Education is ceasing to be a luxury for a fortunate few, and is becoming a necessity for all. It is ceasing to be an accomplishment for aristocracy, and is becoming the mainstay and ultimate guarantee of democracy. Os neces sity, therefore, it has had to seek a medium of attainment—a course of study—of more univer sal appeal, of more general applicability, than that which it used to employ. “The leaders of educational thought, who have sought long, and not in vain, for the wealth of culture in an educational Eldorado, are returning in numbers now and finding a richer wealth in bounless quantities in the homely interests of every day life. Without denyinr questioning the great value in the old school subjects, we are coming to accept as a cardinal principle of education the poetical vision of Wordsworth: “ ‘Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—-but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all I should know what God and Man is.’ ” TWO OF A KIND. A GREAT COMBINATION OFFER. The Christian Herald and The Golden Age. Two of the Most Popular a year to any Religious Publications n 52.25P America —only .... United States The Christian Herald is America’s oldest and most beautiful undenominational religious weekly. Send for this great combination TODAY. 7