Life — September 7, 1899 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*LIFE A Plea for Parents. ORTUNE and fame and the gratitude of an overbur- dened people lie in wait for the or woman who will start a school on new and hitherto un- tried princi school in which the chil- dren will study their their teachers’ help, and then go home and recite them to their parents, This inversion of the ordinary educational methods, while cal- culated to increase the labors of the peda- gogue, will bring freedom and peace and a sense of exquisite repose to many house- holds, now groaning under the oppression of daily tasks which no one is able to master. For it is surprising how soon the erudi- tion we all acquire in youth melts away under the genial sun of idleness, or perbaps under the stress of weightier cares and work. It is true we read Ovid and Virgil in those prehistoric days when we, too, went to school; but that is no reason why we should be confronted now with half a page of Cesar, and forced into a humiliat- ing avowal of ignorance. Why cannot Harry and Dick learn their Latin in school, where their teachers are presumably familiar with the Commentaries, and, if we “THERE WAS A LOUD W-RAP ON THE DOOR.” ples—a WIEN YOU PURCHASED DIS HAMMOCK DID YOU ASK PO" A HAMMOCK Fo TWO?” “No, HONEY, JES’ FO" ONE AND A HALF.” must bear a helping hand in their edu- cation, let them bring the neatly written translation home, and we will give it our unhesitating approval. It is not at allamusing to spend half an hour every evening in hunting up cities and tracing rivers on maps so finely printed and covered with such a network of red lines that we are well-nigh blinded by looking at them, Personally, we feel no interest in populations and exports, nor in the subtle intricacies of grammar, nor in the French irregular verbs, norin the rudiments of natural sciences. Yet we are reluctantly compelled to renew our acquaintance with these long- discarded enemies of infancy, because without help the children cannot, and without coercion they very sensibly will not, learn the multitudinous lessons they bring home every day from school. As for arithmetic, it has become the béte noir of many otherwise cheerful and happy households. There may be some sense and meaning in these hideous ex- amples, which remain impenetrable mysteries to the uninitiated; but why should they be forced upon people who are no longer going to school, and who are, moreover, paying portly bills for the tuition of their little boys and girls? I knew homes in which fathers