Golden Age, August 31, 1932

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Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

INJUSTICES IN MISREADING METERS

GLOBULES ASKING FOR TROUBLE WHY THE COLLAPSE OF MORALITY

PROSPERITY FOR EVER ESTABLISHED

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every other

WEDNESDAY /ive cents a copy one dollar a year

Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIII - No. 338

August 31, 1932

CONTENTS

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

50,000.000 on Relief.....755

Cigarettes for XVomen ’ .... 757

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Elementary Education—

Getting Ready to Live . . . 739

Globules.........753

Nine Finest Buildings .... 756 Bad Flour from Farm

Board Wheat......756

Definition of a Racket .... 757

Cop Shot While Training . . . 75b

Why Collapse of Morality . . 763

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

I?■ justices in Misreading Meters 752

86% of Value Gone.....754

36 Railroads Helped.....754

First Air-Cooled Train .... 754

Alicldle West Utilities Company 755

Country Banks and Local Loans 755 "The Rocket” at Reading-

Terminal ........756

Like Child Blowing L’p Balloon 758

Ship Canal Across France . . 758

C. & O. s Crack Train .... 759

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Withhold All Rights .... 753

"The Law Is Done”.....754

307 Foreign Conferences , . . 755

Nicaraguans Serve Notice . . . 755

What Presidentls Concerned With 756

Council of National Defense . . 759

U. S. Loses Russian Trade . . 759

Prison Beatings in Portsmouth . 760

Satan's Kingdom Hard to Manage 760

Britain Living in Dreamland . 760

Another Prison Murder in Florida 761

Asking for Trouble.....762

AGRICULTURE LYD HUSBANDRY

Oranges in Palestine .... 753 New Potatoes from Bolivia . . 753

Homesteading in Pennsylvania . 761

SCIENCE AND INVENTION Glassmaker’s Invention . , .759

HOME AND HEALTH

Dry Bread Made Fresh . . . .767

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

More Ancient Cities Found . . 753

Cruelty to Horses in France , . 756

Fall of Ashes in Argentina . . 757 $1,000 Funeral for Dog . . . 75S

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Nashville Deeply Stirred . . . 753 What You Get for $25 . . .753 Tucker Is Right......756

Christians and World War . , 758 "The Workshop of God’’ . . 760 Willing to Take Anything . . 761

Prosperity for Ever Established 764

Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & MARTIN

Copai tneis and Proprietors Address: 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, A. Y., U. S. A. CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH . . Editor ROBERT J. MARTIN .. Business Manager NATHAN H. KNORR . . Secretary and Treasurer

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Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1S79.

tfte Golden Age

Volume XIII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, August 31, 1932 Number 338

Elementary Education—Getting Ready to Live

IT IS a good while since we were in the Garden of Eden. Life is more complicated than it was. An education that was all right for Cain and Abel would hardly do now. God expects men and women to use their intelligence in training their children for the battle of life.

It is God himself who says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hos. 4:6) There are things they must know if they would live. What are the things they must know ? Who is to teach them? How far is the instruction to go? Who is to shoulder the responsibility and the cost? What may be expected of the teacher? What may the teacher expect of the child? Where does the duty of the parent begin, and end? These are some of the questions that call for an answer.

It is the right of the child to be so taught that he shall not be destroyed, either temporarily or permanently, for lack of knowledge. That means that somebody must tell him about God. The ones who are most in duty bound to do that are the ones who were responsible, for his coming into the world, his parents. Parents who do not try to tell their children about God, and teach them to look to Him for guidance in all things, are pool* parents, hardly above the dogs and cats and other animals about them.

There was a time when a parent felt in duty bound to see that his son was instructed in a trade; but what trade shall he learn today ? The trades of yesterday are but memories now. Shall the boy learn to be a wheelwright, or a blacksmith, or a teamster? Who can tell what line of business he will be in when he grows up? Has he musical talent ? There are thousands of capable musicians who can find nothing to do since the radio took over the work they once performed.

The Neighbor Next Door

What is it that you want in your neighbor next door, for your own good, as well as his?

You want that he should be a man who loves God, for you know if he loves God he will love you and every other man, and thus be a good neighbor. You want him to know how to read and what to read, so that you can have pleasant and profitable interchange of ideas with him.

You want him to have ability or skill in at least one line, and preferably in many lines, so that he may obtain and retain employment and you not be forced to see him lose his home and his family suffer because he cannot provide for them, and you be forced to have a stranger in his place.

You want him to have the power of thinking clearly and well, so that when you have discussed some matter with him his responses will indicate that his mental processes are reasonably reliable. You would not want to have a half-witted person live next to you.

And, finally, you would want your neighbor to be a person with some power of emotional response. If your little girl fell into the well, or your house burned down, or your wife ran off with another man, you would not like to have him take it all as a matter of course.

What you want in your neighbor you want in your son or your daughter. You want that they shall be somebody’s good neighbors sometime, as good to somebody else as your present neighbor is to you now, or as you wish him to be. And therefore it is your bounden duty to see to it that your child is given adequate guidance and exercise in acquiring knowledge, doing things, thinking and feeling, to make him a good neighbor. If you do less by your child you are not doing to others as you would wish to be done by; you are not loving your neighbor as yourself.

How much knowledge shall you see to it that your son acquires? That is a hard question, but it must be answered. Economic conditions almost compel most parents to look to the schoolteacher to answer, and the school-teacher is an

important factor in the development of almost every American,

The Three Rudiments

Does it seem unreasonable that a child should learn to read well? Who is there that has not been in companies where some have been called on to read something, and it was very apparent they had never learned to read anything, and their entire audience suffered and groaned inwardly from the first word they uttered until they finished?

Does it seem unreasonable that boys and girls should be taught to spell the words they are likely to spell? There is a book, the Thorndyke Word Book, which contains the 10,000 most-used words in the order of their frequency. Those are the words that boys and girls should learn to spell.

Does it seem unreasonable that boys and girls should be taught to write a plain, readable handwriting, so that when they are away from home they can give some intelligent account of themselves or make such appeals for assistance as may be necessary?

And does it seem unreasonable that hoys and girls should know enough about mathematics that they can keep a check book? It is almost certain, in the present state of society, that every one of them must learn how to keep one, for it is the way almost all bills are paid and receipted.

Mathematics in the higher branches, or even in multiplication and division, is still difficult for children to learn. In the year 1929 more pupils failed in mathematics in the New York high schools than in any other subject. In one school more than half of the pupils failed in first-term algebra. On the other hand, less than 5 percent failed in music and domestic science. The reason: mathematics is work; music is play.

Some of the best lessons of school life are outside of the books. In one New York family it was noted that, though there were several children of school age, only one came to school each day, though hot always the same one. Investigation showed that there was only one pair of shoes; the first kid up in the morning seized them and made off to school in them.

New York schools have an element of thrift education, well conducted. More than half the total enrollment of 1,200,000 pupils have saving accounts in the school banks. Money is withdrawn only after great deliberation. One little kid drew on his savings and his check book stub stated that it was for “a pair of shoes so my father can look for work”. Good reason, eh?

Stars and Plants and Animals

By the time it is old enough to go to school every child has seen some of the stars and plants and animals and is entitled to know something about them. That includes some knowledge of geography, the things that go to make up God’s physical handiwork.

Coming down from the stars to terra firms, there is a huge amount of satisfaction for a city child to have a part in a school garden. As early as 1869 laws were passed in Sweden and Austria requiring the wide establishment of school gardens. France, Russia, Belgium, England and Switzerland followed and by 1891 the first school flower garden was established in Boston. Training in the care of living plants and animals inculcates sympathy, love of the beautiful, and tends to promote self-support, physical vigor and moral stamina.

Someone has said that man is not born free, hut is born helpless, and comes to freedom more through what he learns than in any other way. It seems not a bad way to put it. The most helpless people in the world are those who know the least.

It is good to have access to a library, and to make u.se of it, but one may have “book lamin’ ” and still be broken in health, disagreeable, unfitted for any task, unsuited to home life, a moral menace to society, a grafter politically and an emotional wreck.

To educate means to “draw out"; but it means to put in, too. Something can be drawn out of a barrel that has been filled, but not out of an empty one. The true object of education is neither to increase production nor to develop a governing class. It is to awaken in all the power to think logically, to develop powers of discernment and construction, to cultivate sympathy, generosity, large-heartedness and honesty in every direction.

Education versus Selfishness

God is the great Educator, the supremely unselfish One. No matter how many facts one may have acquired, if he is selfish he is not educated. Real education means ability to take the knocks that come. Reading about toleration will not make a person tolerant. Practice is necessary. Mr. II. G. Wells says very well that “education exists to subdue the individual for the good of the world and his own ultimate happiness”.

An educated person should be able to support himself and three others. He should be able to use his hands as well as his mind. He should be a person of high moral principle. He should be physically fit. An educated mind can always amuse itself while planning useful things for others.

The classroom can do something for a student, but he must do most of it himself. Tests which have been made show that less than ten percent of what is heard in the classroom can be reproduced by the pupil immediately afterward. That education of itself is far from being a cure-all is evident when we consider that the period in which the troubles of society have multiplied with the greatest rapidity witnessed an unprecedented expansion of organized education.

Such schools as have been teaching their pupils to think and act selfishly have really been adding to the burdens of mankind instead of lightening the load. A highly intelligent thief who has had his wits sharpened by contact with others like-minded is a far more dangerous man than a dullard who works out some stupid plot alone. That is why the prison system is such a colossal failure. It is a graduate school in crime.

Merely from the standpoint of selfishness, it is not denied that such education as is provided in the colleges is financially profitable. The total earnings of an untrained man up to the age of sixty are $45,000; that of a high school graduate $78,000; that of a college graduate $150,000. Ninety percent of college men rise to large salaries and responsible positions.

It is to their selfishness that we owe the present wretched condition of civilization. Most of the apostles of Big Business, the Big Preachers and the Big Politicians, were trained in the big colleges and universities. The readers of The Golden Age are not specially interested in these men or in their schools, but we are interested in the common schools for the common people, and therefore this article is specially about them.

The Kindergarten and On Up

It took humanity a long time to realize that children have some rights. Dickens tells us that in his days, in England, '‘There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were vicious-faced boys, brooding with leaden eyes like malefactors in a gaol; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness.” It is not a happy picture.

One of the greatest ideas ever evolved was that of the kindergarten. At first the idea that children should learn to play while at school, and should meanwhile make a start in the use of the manual crafts and in social development, was looked upon with suspicion even in its homeland of Germany. The farmers looked upon the notion of play as likely to produce loafers.

Froebel, the originator of the kindergarten, was not at first able to interest women teachers in his plans for making the schoolroom as nearly as possible a miniature society, but by teaching the little folks games and songs about the carpenter, the blacksmith, the farmer and the shoemaker, he gradually won over the men and later enlisted the cooperation of the women. At one time he was deeply disappointed that the women of Germany were more interested in baking and brewing than in his ideas of child training.

The first kindergartens in America were German-speaking ones, dating from 1855. At first American parents thought of them as places where parents could park their infants safely and diversions were employed to keep them out of mischief. Their value is now well recognized.

Though, of the 5,000,000 children of kindergarten age in this country, only about 750,000 are enjoying the training between the ages of four and six, yet the better progress of such children in the grade schools is well recognized. They have better vocabularies and are less likely to be retarded at the end of the term. They are less timid and antisocial and have acquired valuable habits which are of importance throughout life.

The Platoon System

Those of us who were not educated in schools where the platoon system is in force ought to take a little time off and visit a public school some day. The little folks under this workstudy-play system are divided into two groups which alternate between sessions in the classroom and equally long periods in the auditorium, library and gymnasium.

Advantages claimed for the system are that the rudiments are as well taught, while music, art, nature study and other subjects receive better attention, and that school buildings, when the work is organized on the platoon system, will accommodate a third more children than otherwise, and with no increase in cost.

As more than half of the children never attend any other than the elementary school, it is very important that such schools accomplish many ends. They are supposed to provide such training as to make good citizens, worthy members of the home, made ready for some specific vocation, familiarized with the tools of learning, able to appreciate good health and knowing something of how to maintain it, and prepared for further educational advantages if they present themselves.

The 6-3-3-4 plan is a system of distributing the sixteen study years which has found favor in Detroit and elsewhere. Six years are spent in elementary education, three in junior high schools in which some opportunity is given to test predilections or aptitudes, three in senior high schools or technical or vocational schools, and four years in college or professional training.

In Kansas City the usual 8-4-4 plan (eight years in elementary school, four years in high school, and four years in college) has been changed to a 7-4-4 plan and data has been collected showing that in crowding the eight years of elementary work into seven years there is no measurable loss of educational standing.

Nevertheless, it is not possible to trim very much out of elementary schooling. It is found from experience that poor records in preparatory schools mean poor or worse records farther up.

There have been some experiments in allyear schools, which divide the school year into four 12-week quarters. In these schools the child is allowed to omit any quarter after having passed one of the voluntary quarters, or he. may continue without interruption and thus graduate in a shorter time. The latter method takes about all the play out of a child’s life. It is a vicious example of 'efficiency’ at its worst.

Education at Home

Occasionally there are parents, well educated themselves, and appreciative of their great privileges and responsibilities as such, who enjoy teaching their own children in their own homes. There is no question of their absolute, right to do so. Adam and Eve were not told to send their children to the public schools.

The United States Supreme Court, in the Oregon school cases of June 1, 1925, has ruled that a state cannot lay down a uniform type of education for youths, obliging them to attend only public schools. The child is not a creature of the state, but he has parents, and those parents have the duty and the privilege to attend to the child’s education, either directly or by other methods that are acceptable or may be made acceptable to the state. No state can oblige any child to attend public school if the parents can provide proof that satisfactory instruction is being given in subjects which the state regards as essential to citizenship.

How is it, then, that we so often read in the papers that where parents have undertaken to educate their own children the courts have stepped in and insisted that they be sent to public schools ? The answer must be either that the parents did not give the required instruction, or else that the court was unjust, or the parents had a poor lawyer. If the instruction is up to standard, the court can do no more than prepare itself for a rebuke if it judges unjustly, and if the parents are able to insist on their rights.

Any person who can read and write can study almost any subject under the sun with any of the great correspondence schools. One of these institutions, in Scranton, Pa., has upward of three million students, living in all parts of the world, and studying in their own homes almost every known branch of science and art.

Education by Wireless

If the courts were to try to decide that people could not study in their own homes, either they or the people would be out of luck in short order, for the education of the people by radio is just now the greatest phenomenon of our day. Whether the education the people are receiving by radio is the best that could be given them, or whether it is the worst, nobody can deny they are getting it.

In some homes the radio rims almost constantly from morning until far into the night. Indeed, the occupants of the home get so used to it that when a stranger calls with the message of God's kingdom, the most important message in the world, they do not even know it is going, but listen open-mouthed while he tells them about the New Government, the meanwhile the loud-speaker is flooding the air with news about everything from tooth paste to proclamations of truth almost sufficient to awaken the patriarchs from the tomb.

Dr. J. E. Morgan, editor of the Journal of the National Education Association, has stated that one powerful organization in the United States is expending a million dollars a year in propaganda to keep control of radio in the hands of private interests. He wishes to go to the other extreme and have certain radio channels assigned to ‘the educational authorities’ and owned and operated at the public expense, without recourse to commercial advertising. Whether the education that would then come to the people via radio would be better than that they are now getting would remain to be seen.

The first National Advisory Council on Radio in Education, financed by the Rockefeller and Carnegie interests, held its initial session a year ago, with 500 educators present, and is developing programs, securing broadcasting facilities and studying the effectiveness of instruction by radio. Saskatchewan supplements its regular school courses by radio. In some cases there is unusual interest manifested in instruction given by a far-away teacher, but it needs the influence of a local teacher to sustain it. Experience teaches that a twenty-minute radio lecture is about the right length. If longer, the effect is usually lost.

Education by Movies and Talkies

Movies and talkies can be operated in the home, but they are naturally adapted to group instruction. By their means the child may now see and hear Niagara Falls, or any other cataract, and may learn more of polar exploration in a few minutes than could be learned from any number of textbooks.

As long as four years ago 15,000 educational institutions in America were using “teaching films”, and many state universities maintained film libraries to cooperate with other educational organizations in their respective states. By now this use of films must be much more widespread.

At that time Yale University had participated in the preparation of a series of films on American history and Harvard was cooperating with a big film-producing concern in making films relating to science. Some other universities were making films on their own account and upon a rather extensive scale.

In the teaching of science the combination microscope and lantern projector are still used. The teacher places a drop of ditch water on a glass slide. The lights go out and in a moment, on the screen, the children see the teeming, moving, varied forms of life which occupy that drop of water. A lens is lifted out and instantly the busy life on the screen ceases, killed by the heat. Thus the child has, in a moment, seen life in its simplest forms, and has also seen the principle of sterilization applied.

There is no end to the instruction that can be conveyed by pictures and talkies, and we revel in the prospect that is ahead of mankind. Everything in the physical universe, every form of life and every manifestation of that life, from its beginning to its end, may be illustrated, and in due time will be.

It is said that there are no more beautiful flowers in nature than those which grow on moldy bread. Quite likely, by now, these flowers can be photographed in magnified form in their natural colors, and ere long we shall be able to watch the process and even to hear the growing magnified millions of times. The circulation of a man’s blood rushing through his veins was heard all over the country. So is the world today.

How important it is that a child should have good pictures before it from babyhood up. Parents should buy with care the picture books for their infants and always keep evil pictures away from them. The first pictures the child sees should present objects with which the little one is familiar. Illustrated alphabets are not considered to have any educational value.

What Is Expected of the Teachers

To be a perfect teacher one would need to have an inexhaustible fund of information on every subject and to know exactly how to bring the right items to bear on every child. It is admitted to be the most difficult of all the arts. Every editor is a teacher; if he did his work perfectly he would say just the right thing, at the right time, always. Non est!

Married teachers are believed to be more capable than unmarried ones. If there are no children the home does not suffer; if there are children of school age, mother and children are away together. From an economic point of view, single girls need the employment and tho retention of married teachers is considered against the public interest.

In times of financial stress teachers’ examinations automatically become more difficult; and this is as it should be. Those who have made the effort to become best trained should have the work. Males are absent on account of illness only about one-half as much as women teachers. It is generally held that girls over 11 should be taught by women, and boys over 11 by men.

As they are on the public pay roll teachers are subjected to what might be termed coercive donations, especially in times of depression. In New York they have been compelled to give 5 percent of their salaries, with the understanding that announcements would go out that the contributions were voluntary. The last we knew, Chicago had 12,000 teachers whose unpaid salaries totaled more than $17,000,000.

A Happy, Useful Occupation

Other people may grow old, but a teacher has no moral right to do so. Other people may grow dull and stupid, but not the teacher. Chalk dust causes considerable laryngitis and acute bronchitis, and there is some predisposition to tuberculosis and heart disease among teachers, but, taken as a whole, the teacher’s lot is an enviable one.

It is a grand privilege to be in constant contact with the young, to guide, encourage and help the most ardent, enthusiastic and ambitious among us, to stimulate them, to repress them, to partake of their hopes and their spirit, to be a comrade and a confidant of boys and girls, the most interesting things in the whole wide world.

Teachers have three months’ rest in summer, two weeks at ‘'"Christmas” time, one week at Easter, two days out of every seven, and two hours out of every day. They must have time to keep abreast of the rush of new sciences. They are better educated and better trained now than was the case a few years ago.

Discovering that 25 percent of the school children of one city had never seen a cow, and that 50 percent had never seen a calf, the board of education of that city has a truck with a mother cow and a calf making the rounds of the various schools so that the little folks may learn something about milk and steaks and things.

Occasionally a teacher gets up against strange conditions. A Tennessee mother was indignant because her child had been taught the earth is round. She referred to the symbolic statement that the four angels stood on the four corners of the earth, and demanded that her child either be taught that the earth is flat, to agree with the corners, or that the child come home for good. The matter was referred to the principal, with request for a decision. He compromised by saying, “Teach it round to them who wants it round and flat to them who wants it flat.”

Mary Ellen Cahill was graduated more than fifty years ago from Public School 27, Brooklyn. When appointed as a teacher she was assigned to Public School 27, and a few months ago she was still teaching in Public School 27, where she went to work April 1, 1880. Moreover, the building is the same today as it was when she first entered it as a child.

“Religion” and the Schools

“Religion,” the observance of forms and ceremonies, should be kept as far away from the public schools as the east is from the west, but that does not mean that the teacher should be afraid to mention God, the great Creator, or to keep Him ever before the minds of the little folks. To fail to do it is to fail as a teacher.

To see Him in every wonderful and beautiful thing in the universe, and to show Him to the child as He is revealed in first this and then that law or principle or form of life, should be the joy of the teacher’s heart, as it is bound to be of the pupil's.

It is well known that the colleges are, for the most part, atheistic centers. Eighty-five percent of the students enter college with a definite belief in God; but when they reach their senior year less than fifty percent have such a belief. A college student wrote to his parents: “If I had been a Chinaman or a Hindu attending the university, I would not have known from any remarks in the classroom that I was living in a nominally Christian country. Very many hours have been given to discussions of heathen philosophers, but not a single moment to the teachings of Christ.” If you want your children to lose their faith in God, send them to college.

Militarism is a form of “religion”. It is an outward expression of the “religion” that the Devil's kingdom is God’s kingdom and that it is right to commit mass murder, and to train for it, in order to keep that kingdom dominant in the earth. Many colleges have instruction in militarism and are “religious” in that sense.

Another form of the. Devil’s “religion” is evolution, taught in every college, as gospel truth, though it is false. Worship of any flag, no matter whose it is, and “oaths of allegiance” are all “religions” and entirely out of place in a public school supported by taxes paid by all the citizens. If anybody wants to worship a flag, let him do it at home.

The Bible in the Schools

In England, a century ago, the Bible was used as a textbook in teaching arithmetic, history and geography. An arithmetic book called attention to the fact that there were six stone waterpots at the marriage of Cana of Galilee, each holding two or three firkins, and the question was asked the pupils, “If they held two firkins, how much water would it take to fill them: and how much if they held three firkins each?”

The Pittsburg Gazette Times says very well: “There is a time and place for everything; a time and place for education, and for religious instruction. The school is no place to teach the Bible or religion, and the pulpit is no place to teach geography or politics.”

There are now eleven states, with a population of 70,000,000, that prohibit Bible reading in the public schools; thirty, with a population of 14,000,000, where the Bible may be read in the schools; and seven states providing by law that it must be read. In California the King James Version may not be read, on the ground that it teaches a particular creed.

In North Dakota the law requires that a copy of the Ten Commandments given to the Jews shall be displayed in every schoolroom in the state. We see no objections to this, if there is no protest from the taxpayers.

Parochial School Influences

Parochial schools furnish 65 percent of the criminals of the country, and the public schools five percent. The average illiteracy in the seven solidly Roman Catholic countries of Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Guatemala is 61.86 percent. We mention these facts because of the oft-repeated claims put forth by Roman Catholic writers that the public schools are “godless”, “vicious,” and a “sink of corruption” because they are (and should be) strictly secular institutions.

In all countries where there are public schools the Roman Catholic church works against them, but in Ecuador and some other countries any priest who uses the pulpit to disseminate propaganda against the public schools is summarily deported.

The undermining of the public schools is sought in a variety of ways: by the usual charges that they are godless; by diversion of funds to parochial schools; by encouraging other sects to start parochial schools; by placing Roman Catholics on school boards and on teaching staffs; and by working against the normal schools engaged in training public school teachers.

The public school system of Maryland is entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic church, not a single official in that state being elected by the votes of the people. It is only two and a half years since the pope, in 12,000 slobbering words, demanded that in every country the teachers, the curriculum and the books, as well as all the teaching, be “under the maternal direction and vigilance of the church”.

A favorite method of boosting parochial schools is to parade the names and pictures of winners of educational contests in such a manner as to make the public suppose that the contests include pupils of the public schools. Headlines announce that such and such a pupil of a parochial school won such and such a contest, but neither the headings nor the statements acquaint the readers with the fact that only parochial schools participated.

Working on the Inside

Though the opening of a parochial school has before now caused the closing permanently of some public school, yet the principal of the public school at Perronville, Michigan, is a Roman Catholic priest, and if he leaves off his horse collar and beads and skirts he has as much right to the job as anybody.

In New Haven, Conn., the “mother superior” of a convent is principal of the Hamilton Street public school and twenty-three other nuns are teaching in the same school. Moreover, while other teachers walk to their work, or get there the best way they can, these nuns are carried by motor bus at public expense. Their wages, instead of helping to maintain American homes, go into the treasuries of the prisons in which they reside, to the last cent.

Though the number of parochial school students in America is now almost exactly 2,500,000, yet singularly few of these pupils have ever attained to eminence in American life. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the increase in juvenile crime is in proportion to the increase in the number of pupils enrolled in Roman parochial institutions.

The Best-Educated People

The best-educated people are the Hebrews. Not only was Moses “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22), but he knew a lot of things the Egyptians never learned. The command to write the words of the Law “upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” (Deut. 6:9) implies a general knowledge, an ability to read and write at a time when the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons were naked savages and cannibals.

The elders of Israel knew how to write (Deut. 27:8), the wisdom of Solomon “excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt” (1 Ki. 4:30); there were the schools of the prophets, and others such as Gamaliel conducted; and the superiority of Daniel and his companions over their heathen competitors is known to all.

Teachers were treated with great respect, and, unlike some so-called “religious” teachers today, the teachers in the days of Nehemiah “read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading”. (Neh. 8:8) Our Lord was the greatest teacher that ever lived. He caused men to think. God’s “servant” in the earth is a teaching organization. “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge.”—Prov. 1: 7.

The Greeks spread education over the ancient world. A painting on an ancient Greek vase shows one boy reciting, another fingering a lyre, and a third working with an abacus calculating machine, with a teacher supervising all three.

The general education of the masses began in Holland coincident with the Reformation, and from there spread to Massachusetts and New York. While it is free in America, it is not free in Germany, France or England. In all those countries each pupil, unless a pauper, must pay school fees.

Conditions in America

The country’s school population is estimated at 31,000,000, or more than one-fourth of the population. The average school year is now 172 days, or 10 days more than in 1920. In Belgium there is a six-day school week of thirty-four hours, but in America there is a five-day week and the school week does not exceed twenty-five hours.

The first free school in New York city was opened in 1805 with one teacher and forty pupils. This has grown to 36,000 teachers and 1,250,000 pupils and an annual school budget of $140,000,000.

America now has but 4.3 percent of illiterates. This places it ahead of Canada and far ahead of France, but away behind Japan, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The proportion of illiteracy in the South is 8.2 percent, and this cuts down the showing of the country as a whole.

Des Moines, Fort Wayne, Long Beach, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, Spokane, Tulsa and Wichita each has less than 1 percent of illiterates. Fall River has 10.2 percent; New Bedford, 8.8 percent. Birmingham, El Paso, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Utica make a bad showing.

The depression has closed many rural schools. In some places in the South not a school in the county was opened this past winter, as there was no money to pay the teachers. Of the 3,000,000 children between the ages of 7 and 17 that are not in school, it is estimated that 2,000,000 are gainfully employed.

Occasionally we hear of a large family back in a remote place where none of the family can read or write. A French Canadian farmer so situated appointed himself as school commissioner to select a teacher, built a school house, and, as he had fourteen children, the Quebec government granted him a small subsidy and he was able to educate his children.

The South remains the weak spot in America’s educational system. The school terms are shorter, the teachers are more poorly trained, the percentage of nonattendanee is higher, the salaries of teachers are much less, the expenditures for library service are least, and the maintenance of dual school systems makes improvement slow and difficult.

Twenty-one percent of the total population of the South are Negroes, the climate is enervating, and, as it is the most rural part of the country and much of the soil is poor and thin, the recovery from the terrible drain of the Civil War is better than could have been expected.

As to the Expense

When it is reflected that only 31/, percent of the nation’s income goes for education, while 8 percent is used in fighting crime and ‘22 percent is spent on luxuries, it does not seem that too much attention is being paid to giving the boys and girls a start in life.

In the year 1928 the yearly cost of educating a public school pupil in 36 of the principal cities of the United States was $107, as against $38.31 in 1913, in which year the wages of the teachers were notoriously inadequate.

The children of 1932 go to school two more years than in 1914. The classes are smaller. The chances of going to high school are five times as good as thirty years ago, and the chances of going to college six times as good. The length of the school year has been gradually increased. The school day has also been stretched out.

The public property used for public school purposes in 1928 amounted to a value of $5,423,280,092. States with more than $100,000,000 invested in school buildings were California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. There is over $1,000,000 invested in Alaska, over $5,000,000 in Porto Rico, over $11,000,000 in Hawaii, and over $20,000,000 in the Philippines. There are sizable investments in American Samoa, the Canal Zone, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

The public school buildings in the United States are 257,521 in number. The largest junior high school in the United States is located in Oklahoma City; but Far Rockaway, N. Y., has one that cost $2,500,000. In the effort to save 5c on each graduate, the diplomas issued in New York have been reduced in size from 14 by 17 to 6 by 8 inches.

Consolidation Schools

The little red schoolhouse was painted red because red paint was the cheapest. The coming of the automobile marked its end. True, there are still 161,000 one-room schools and 20,000 two-room schools, but a huge number of them have been closed for good and most of the children are now educated in town.

Some 15,930 schools are now using 40,875 buses, which cover 410,370 miles daily. It is estimated that 44 percent of all motor buses in the country are used for school transportation.

These buses take 1,250,000 children to and from school.

In the past three years about one-half of the states have enacted laws providing for the transportation of pupils to school. Anybody who thinks the automobile companies did not have something to do with getting this legislation passed, please hold up the hand.

The consolidation of schools has caused the construction of elaborate buildings in unusual places, incidentally giving work to builders and providing communities with suitable auditoriums for lectures, pictures, meetings and entertainments, besides increasing their taxes.

At Cape Creek, Oregon, in the fall of 1931, employees of a state highway crew built a schoolhouse 20 by 50 feet in a single day. The pupils were the children of the construction gang; and the teacher was the wife of one of the employees.

The Slimy Hand of Big Business

For more than one generation Big Business has been fattening on the textbook graft. The books are changed frequently, and the parents are charged 80c each for books which could be printed by the Government for a tenth of that amount.

Four years ago the utility companies were flooding the schools with their propaganda against public ownership of public utilities. A certain amount of this is still done, but it is more generally confined to the colleges and universities than to the elementary schools. Most of this is now done under the auspices of the General Staff and by order of the secretary of war, in a course miscalled ‘‘Citizenship’’.

The statement has been boldly made that Big Business has supplied the funds for so editing and preparing certain textbooks as to make them teach that Big Business and Americanization are one and the same thing, and that a proper interpretation of the United States Constitution is that nothing must ever be done to molest them in their hauls.

Of 800 books for juveniles published a year back a committee reported that only 140 could be recommended, more than 500 were found to be of only passing interest and of no literary quality, while 150 of them were actually harmful; the child would be bettei’ off without them.

Dr. William C. Bagley, professor of education at Columbia University, discussing a meeting of educators, said:

"The nation’s educators joined in admitting that our public schools do not teach the basic facts about our industrial, economic and political life. Those who control the textbooks and the schools will not permit it. Soon the only way to get the facts to the child will be through bootleg channels.”

The Worcester Opportunity School

Worcester boys of the seventh and eighth grades, who have lost interest in “book lamin’ ”, are permitted to attend a school in which half the time is devoted to school work and the other half to shop work. The plan should work out well. It is the basic idea upon which the International Correspondence Schools of Scranton and other educational institutions are founded. The fact that one has lost interest in books does not mean that his powers to learn have ceased. They merely need to be directed anew. And when a person has actually begun to work with his hands it not infrequently happens that he sees where a little more knowledge of drawing or mathematics or chemistry or what not would be very much to his advantage, and takes a fresh interest in studies he thought he had for ever laid aside.

“Withhold Not Correction”

The Proverbs contain some pretty plain statements about how to get the best ultimate results with children: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” ‘Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from the grave.” “The- rod and reproof give wisdom; but a child left to himself bringeth . . . shame.” “Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.”—Prov. 22: 6,15; 23:13,14; 29:15,17.

The British seem to take these suggestions more literally than do the Americans. At Mer-cara, South India, 183 pupils quit their school work and went on strike. The schoolmaster caned the lot. When the boys reached home they complained to their parents and most of them got a second dose. Two of the latter then went to a hospital for sympathy and aid and the head surgeon gave them a third walloping and sent them away with their wounds undressed. That was three years ago and there have been no strikes at Mercara since.

Conditions are not as bad as they once were, but (according to Dr. P. B. Ballard, former inspector of London County Council schools, at the Educational Association’s Conference in London) there are still girls’ schools where a girl may be compelled to kneel to the schoolmistress. It is a disgrace to Britain that such a thing should happen under the British flag. No child with a knowledge of the Scriptures would kneel in such a case if he were killed for not doing it. It is tyrannous and outrageous in the extreme.

A Badly Punished Mother

In Brooklyn a boy got into a fight with another boy and got well bruised. He came home and told his mother the teacher did it. The mother waited on the teacher and beat her up savagely with an umbrella. Then she started to run and fell down stairs, fracturing her right leg. As soon as she was able to be about she was arrested and fined $25. Seems as if that mother got the worst of it all around.

A century ago the schoolmaster was expected to flog the recreant; and in some schools in the country there are still closets under the chimney where bad boys may be temporarily kept in storage. In certain English schools a large wicker cage is preserved in which the delinquent was fastened, the cage being then drawn by pulley to the ceiling, where it remained until the ill-doer was ready to be received back into society. The modern tendency is toward extreme freedom rather than toward extreme severity.

On account of the costs of instruction the Council of School Superintendents of the State of New York has gone on record as favoring the dismissal of pupils 14 years of age who are, for any reason, found unfitted to satisfactorily carry out the school program. Schools must be managed in a systematic way, and if pupils cannot keep in line they must go, seems to have been their thought.

In recent years mothers’ clubs, parents’ guilds and parent-teacher associations have exerted a beneficial influence upon the child, both in the home and in school. It is a good thing for fathers, mothers and teachers to keep in close touch with one another, and for the child to know of it.

Examinations and Vacations

Examinations are freely employed by those who approve them, those who condemn them, and those who regard them as a necessary evil. No better way of gauging school progress has yet been found or is likely to be found than an examination properly conducted.

Summer vacations are survivals of the days when farmer boys had to stay out of school to help with the tilling and harvesting of the crops; but there is now no reason why the young folks, especially in the cities, should waste three months of every year. But during the midsummer the schools should be conducted in the parks, and the subjects changed. Educators say that the long summer vacations in cities make the boys bad.

New York has nineteen “Summer Play Schools”. Cleveland has one. For eight weeks during July and August the entire enrollment of fifty pupils studies industrial art under a big tent. They cultivate their own luncheon vegetables, and cool themselves with plunges in a swimming pool, all as a part of their school work.

An intelligent educator has observed very wisely that parents should have vacations from their children and children should have vacations from their parents.

The wise principal of every school has the children assemble as usual and on some heavenly day in spring, unimown to anybody in advance, he tells them, “There will be uo school today.” The happy surprise of such a day lasts throughout a lifetime.

Another wise principal is one who on a day unknown to them sends all the teachers off for the day and leaves the school under the guidance of a student body trained for the task, while he stays around so as to be on hand in case of an emergency.

Morals—Sex—Liquor

The real place for boys and girls to be trained in the above subjects is in the home. If the home influences are right the chances of the child’s turning out well are good. If the home influences are not right, the chance of the boy’s or girl’s turning out better than the parents is remote.

A magazine which made a careful study of the moral complex of several hundred children learned that over half of the children are found to cheat, lie and steal, and their whole outlook on life is unmoral. Very evidently their parents did not bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

A boy's first conscious recognition of sex phenomena comes at six years of age. If his father will not interest himself to help him to clean and clear ideas, he will surely get unclean and badly muddled ideas within a short time thereafter, and think less of his father for it. The psychoanalyst with his dirty mind and dirty methods is ready to poison a little mind out of which can be made to flow reverence, awe and gratitude for the great Giver of all life, the Fountain from which every blessing comes.

Keeping the sexes apart, a skillful educator can do much to help both boys and girls at a time when they need help; and this phase of education is now being carefully considered, and courses in elementary biology taught which really help the children to sane ideas of human society.

Studies of children made by the University of Chicago showed that nearly 100 percent of the boys and about 90 percent of the girls knew all about the bootlegger and his activities. Twenty-six percent of the boys in a New York high school admitted doing some drinking.

An investigation of a group of children showed that they knew all about vote buying. The subjects about which they were most familiar were bootlegging, divorce, sheriff, juvenile court, bail, jury, mayor, election, polling place, ballot, taxes, insurance, bank, rent, and bank deposit, in the order named.

A collector and student of old school readers, L. W. Hendrickson, Jones Spring, W. Va., in several letters to the public press has voiced his suspicion, and we believe he is correct, that “some sinister infernal hand has been tampering with our school readers”. He says, and we believe him, “I have made a careful comparison of the old readers and those now used. It is clear that there has been a serious decline in moral instruction. Not a few of the modern readers are chiefly froth and contain few life-lessons worth remembering.” He thinks McGuffey's, 1879 edition, stands head and shoulders above any published since.

A French master, De Sailly, found that after he had introduced in his school the teaching of kindness to animals the children in the school became more kind to each other. This is as we would expect.

In the Matter of Health

Obviously there is no common sense in spending over $100 a year to educate a child and then not take any interest in his health. A well-educated child in the cemetery has no value. If the child is in need of food, that is something that is relatively easily fixed.

Dallas feeds 20,000 children at a profit, supplying a forty-cent chicken stew for five cents, and ice cream and salad for another five cents. In New York the serving of lunches to 170,000 high school students has grown to a business of almost $2,000,000 yearly. It is conducted at cost. Some thousands of smaller children receive milk from the School Relief Fund regardless of whether school is in session or not.

Capitalism, i.e., 'civilization,’ this system of alternate gluttony and starvation, points out that 90 percent of the school children are victims of bad teeth, abnormal tonsils, defective nose, skin or vision, and the American Medical Association would like to take over the job of rectification, for a consideration. If we let them do it it would be but yet a little while before we would all be working for the doctors; and some of us are already doing it, even as it is.

After what we read in the “Symposium on Medicine”, published in oui' issue of June 8, we find it impossible to get very enthusiastic over letting the M.D.’s do as they will with the children. We know one young man whose life was ruined by vaccination, administered by an M.D.; and there are many such. At 25 years of age he is unable to accept a position because of constant eruptions on his skin, due to the poisons working within. His parents have expended thousands of dollars to try to effect a cure. For months this past winter, in order to live, he swallowed a tube and every other day had eight quarts of water poured down it, thus giving his stomach and intestines a thorough washing. As a result of this drastic treatment, made necessary by filling his blood with poisons, he is gradually recovering.

We know the facts. Of 5,000 children, 1,000 need special attention. Of that number, 700 are improperly nourished, more than 100 have weak or damaged hearts, 35 or 40 are tubercular, twice as many are suspicious cases, 40 are deficient in hearing, 2 are totally deaf, a number need attention to their eyes, 2 are totally blind, and 35 are seriously crippled. There are stammerers, stutterers, lispers, baby talkers, cleft palates, tied tongues, malocclusion cases, nervous disorders, and a host of other things that need attention, but we cannot feel that any one class of healers has shown such wisdom that all these little folks can be turned over to its tender care to the exclusion of the others. It looks as if the parents ought to have something to say about what is done to their children; and that puts the care of the sick back home, where it belongs. But there seems no objection to having their teeth being cared for at school.

Steps in the Right Direction

Every New York school has at least one room open to the weather, in which children with tubercular tendencies may be rendered robust. As a consequence, tuberculosis is diminishing. To reduce the effects of malnutrition many German communities have established schools in the woods.

In Seattle the children are taught how to relax. Mothers provide their children with mats made of newspaper and covered with wrapping paper. The children are taught to lie on the floor ten minutes each day. They lie on the mat face downward, head turned to the left, right leg straight, left leg bent, most of the weight on the right side, and take to it like a duck to the water.

The suggestion has been made that first aid and home nursing should be taught to all students in the. public schools, and it is common sense. The idea of the medical profession that the common people should be taught nothing about how to care for their bodies is the same as that of the preachers that they must learn nothing about the Bible. Children could at least be taught reasonable care of their eyes, how to remove the wax from their ears, to eliminate white flour products from their dietary, to avoid aluminum cooking utensils, to drink plenty of pure water, and to sleep with the windows open.

Among the Dullards

The world's experience with prodigies has been unsatisfactory. On the other hand, Thomas Edison’s teacher reported that it was a w’aste of time to try to educate him; General Ulysses S. Grant was near the foot of his class at West Point; Henry Ward Beecher was considered a poor scholar; and Charles A. Lindbergh was requested to take his books and leave the University of Wisconsin because his standings were so low.

Sometimes it is defective eyes, and sometimes defective ears, that cause a student to fall behind and get discouraged. Sometimes the other pupils tease him for failing to he promoted, and that disheartens him completely. A Brooklyn girl committed suicide because she made a second failure to graduate from the grammar school. In Mississippi a sixteen-year-old boy burned down the schoolhouse just before it was supposed to open, and when the sheriff came to lug him off he explained that the reason he burned the structure was “just because 1 don’t like school”.

When the unusually bright children are separated from the others it turns them into snobs. Every school has its problem children. Considerable has been accomplished by making individual studies of these. Vienna has been making use of data gathered from the child when it first enters school. Both the child and the parents fill out comprehensive questionnaires, and from time to time these are considered in connection with the teacher's own experiences with him. In emergencies the child and his parents and teachers all meet and go over the situation, and this has been found helpful.

In Dalton, Mass., and in three thousand English schools and about a hundred schools in America, there are no classroom recitations, but the children are dealt with individually.

The Walden plan of teaching makes geography the basis of everything. Babies are admitted as soon as able to walk. First they learn to go about the school, and locate, their room with reference to the rest of the premises. Later they venture out into the streets and locate parks, markets, docks, bridges, public buildings and factories.

Reading is taught more rapidly than formerly by the use of cut-out pictures which must be fitted into certain places, designated by names. By the new method the child learns 190 words in the time usually spent in learning 125.

Little Folks Elsewhere

All Mexico is athirst for education, meanwhile making it hot for the Roman Catholic church that has hitherto held everything back. Within the past five years an entirely new type of school has been opened in the congested districts. The schools are built about a patio. Each room has two or, at most, three walls, the side toward the courtyard being always open. Shower baths, swimming pools and playgrounds are provided.

In Great Britain elementary education is in the hands of the Church of England. It is claimed that the use of men teachers for boy pupils in these schools gives British boys a two years’ start on Americans. This may be true, yet, for some strange reason, Canadian business men are favorable to the employment of American-trained heli) and prejudiced against those trained in England.

As in America, the British are using wireless, and films and talkies in their schools, but thus far this work is largely experimental. Last year educational talkie films were shown four times to each of seventeen schools on the northwest fringe of London. Four films were shown at each of the four sessions. The results were to be studied; we do not know what conclusions were reached.

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