A Plea for the Children of the Elementary and Grade Schools (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from A Plea for the Children of the Elementary and Grade Schools A suit of clothing, be it ever so cheap, is valuable to a man in proportion to the measure of comfort and happiness it affords him, and when, by reason of his physical, aesthetic or fastidious developement, or by reason of its own wear and tear, it fails to serve him satisfactorily, he has no compunction in laying it aside for another which better meets his immediate need. The mere hut, which was once sufficient shelter against material enemies, is no longer a home for civilized man, his advancement along innumerable practical and artistic lines requires furnishings and trappings which his earlier condition never dreamed of. Many of the old ideas which man once held sacred, as a part of his religion, are now listed in the category of superstition. With the chains of darkness and ignorance broken, he is left free to exercise both mind and hand in studying and applying the laws of his Creator for perpetuating his own existence. In Mediaeval times the church undertook to establish a system of mental training which would prepare the clergy for their particular line of work. It was an attempt to develope knowledge from consciousness, by a course of gymnastics in formal reasoning, and any sort of observation, experiment or investigation was tabood. A course was designed for the education of church officials, who constituted a leisure class and who, to show that they were separated from the laboring classes, instituted the custom of wearing extra long sleeves with white cuffs. At that time universal education was not even thought of, in fact such a venture could not have been voiced with any guarantee of safety to those advocating it. Education was kept under the control of the ruling classes, it was a monopoly of the aristocracy, for they realized that a thinking people do not serve well under tyranny. "Know the truth and it shall make you free" has many literal as well as figurative applications. Without entering into a discussion of the historic development of our school system as it stands today, suffice it to say, that we have attempted the great problem of educating all the people. And most of our states have gone so far as to pass laws compelling all children under a specified age, usually fourteen or sixteen years, to attend some school. This is a tremendous task, for at least two very evident reasons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.