Our District Schools

The Webster Farmer's Club met at W. E. Boyden's last Saturday. A better place for 'holding the meeting could not have been chosen. The Boyden farm has long been a model one. It is known all over the state as such, and it would be hard to match. lts 400 broad acres are very fertile and in a high state of cultivation. The buildings are very large, very well arranged, and the stock is all well cared for. It is well worth while to look over the farm buildings and at the valuable stock. Mr. Boyden has at present almost seventy head of short-horn cattle of the purest strain of blood, and his sales have become a feature, and are attended by all the leading cattlemen of the state. He has a little over 200 full blood merino sheep. Some of the rams are very costly. They were all in good condition Saturday, and all warmly sheltered. The stalls in the horse barn contained about twenty horses, all sleek and apparently good feeders. A monster short-horn buil, weighing 2,500 with a regular buil head, nearly as large as a buffalo, gazed placidly at the sight-seers, while a two-year old buil looked as if he would soon rival the big fellow in size. There was a large attendance at the club meeting. Before dinner :he committee on county organization made a favorable report which was adopted, and Mrs. Ida Smith was elected recording secretary. A aig dinner was served to which all did ampie justice. After dinner the trio, which generally is a quartette, sang, " With the Tide." They are all good singers and sing well to-gether. The gavel of Mr. Olsaver, the club president, came down and Mr. C. G. Starks took the floor. He spoke in :avor of patronizing the newspapers which had come out to report the Droceedings of the meeting. The committee on programme reported that the February meeting would be held at William Balls, in Hamburg with the following programme : Select reading, Mrs. 3urnham ; recitation, Walter Tubbs; question box; paper, by Rev. G. E. Lincoln; question, HowMuch Health and Happiness Depends on the Use and Abuse of the Flatiron ? lead by Mrs. Edwin Ball and Mrs. Ira Backus. The last question was put by the committee, " From What Source Shall the Farmer Find Relief from His Present Financial Difficulties," was objected to by Mr. Ball as bringing politics into the club. It was changedto,The Causes and Prevention of Goitre in Lambs. Rev. S. Thompson Morris, of Dexter, was the first speaker, and spoke earnestly on the District Schools and a Uniform System of Text-Books : We live in an age of startling propositions. A few days ago the mayor of New Haven stated that the city ought to own the' railroads. The new mayor of Boston suggested the same thing there. We are living in an age of progress. I refer to the last quarter of a century. You form a part of the grandest nation in the world, which stands at the head in public schools, and Michigan stands at the very head of the states. In spite of our great progress, we have history to show us that along with these advantages there have come weaknesses. I don't mean that I am alarmed, yet half the money spent for the public schools properly paid out, would make the schools better than they are. There are 625,000 school children in the state. Of these, fewer than 400,000 are in attendance on the public schools. Some are married. Yet there are more than 50,000 in the state which are without the benefits of education. The very fact that our institutions for the reform of the crimináis are increasing, and are crowded to suffocation, shows something wrong. There is a falling off in attendance in the district schools. There has been, last year, 1,614 !ess in the graded schools, 3,285 less in the ungraded schools, while there has been 10,000 more children in the state. The law places in the hands of the district board a power, I think, ought not to have been given them. The law says the board shall prescribe a course of text-books. I never met an intelligent member of these boards who would say, I am competent to choose such a series. How many are capable of judging of the binding of the book. Take the illustrations. In these pictures are things the child will never forget. I would shrink from deciding on the pictures. How many are capable of judging of the matter which shall go in these books. Barnes' first history took the Confedérate side of the history of the war, for the purpose of catering to the southern trade. The authority to choose text-books ought never to have been put in the district board. I would select a commission of five members, headed by the superintendent of public instruction, and the best educated men to be found. I would have them paid a liberal salary, say L5,000. I would have them take a text book, revise it, prepare it in manuscript, send this manuscript to the various reformatories. I would have the prisoners set to work manufacturing the text-books for the children of Michigan. I would thennotify the schools that all the text-books are on hand which will be sent them free of charge. The disgrace of our system is that in one district we have one set of text-books, and in another district another set. Men manufacturing wagons have to compete with convict labor, so does the boot and shoe manufacturer. This is wrong. Their labor has been sold. This would settle the question of convict labor. There isn't a text-book manufactory in the state of Michigan. I venture to say that it costs $20 to buy text-books necessary to edúcate a child. The school book establishments have formed a trust. The state could furnish better text books than we are now getting, at one-fourth the cost. "Bring Once Mo' My Deah Old Banjo" was sang by the trio with good effect. Hon. William Ball, of Hamburg, agreed in the main with Mr. Morris but evidently considered him an extremist. There were two sides to the question. People who bring up children are as capable of choosing their books as theorists. Opinions change and the opinions have to be incorporated in the text books. No set of men could draw up a series of text books that would not need to be changed. Mr. Morris read opinions of state superintendents of many states favoring the township school system. He drew a picture of a school house with wraps stuck in the windows and advertisements on the buiiding, to show the negligence of school trustees. Mr. Ball spoke of the danger of committing the finances of the school districts to few men. The tendency in education is too much towards cramming and pushing the children ahead of their absolute resources. W. E. Stocking, of Lima, said that when a boy he studied geography. The United States came first in his geography. By the time they got through the United States, school would be out and the next term they would begin at the beginning and never got any farther than the United States. The geograhies now put Europe first, because of this habit of the teachers. He favored a wide discussion of the township school system. E. A. Nordman said "we must edúcate ourselves to meet this question and bring our views to bear upon our legislature. On an average, more than half our taxes are school taxes. I do not claim that our school taxes are too high. But those who need it most do not seem to appreciate our school system. We have men whose buisness it is made to see that the children attend school. It is the failure of these men to do their duty which causes the falling off in attendance. Comparitively few are willing to assume the responsibilities of office. This is the great difficulty. The common school is the college of the masses. The question is, will you increase the opportunity yf these children by the concentration of these schools? If you adopt this unit system, you turn over the control of the schools in 125 townships to the villages. Necessarily tney would draw the school to the villages and part of the township would be schoolless. It would lessen the opportunity of the children who have no means of transportation. Mr. McCall said nine out of ten of our district officers were either incompetent or did not attend to their duties. Mr. Stocking spoke of the habit of the Lutheran German's drawing their children out of the public schoals at the age of fourteen, to instruct them in the catechism in the Germán schools. He spoke of the decisión of the Australian commission who had examined the school systems of foreign countries and the state and decided the Michigan system to be the best. Mr. Nordman said there were not as many Germán school teachers as there ought to be. This ended the discussion. Rev. Mr Lincoln gave notice of an oyster supper for the benefit of the Congregational church of Webster, to be held at Mr. Boyden's, Wednesday evening, January 21.