Central Washington University - Hyakem / Kooltuo Yearbook (Ellensburg, WA)

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So. finally, our leading educators and literary men have gone straight to the point and have begun a system to simplify spelling. Already ten words have been accepted by the public in their simplified form, and a board known as the Simpli¬ fied Spelling Board has drawn up and circulated a list of three hundred more. Most of us, being poor spellers, are glad to see this little leak in the dike of conventionality, and few will try to stick their finger in the crack and stand up all night to save it: for. if the dike breaks, all will be easy sailing. The Kooltuo has watched this movement eagerly, and has been among the first to accept the modified words. But we have gone further. Being disappointed in not finding several words, which we recommended to the Board for simplifica¬ tion in their list, we have taken upon ourselves the responsibility of presenting them to the public. And in so doing we have chosen a rather unique method. Instead of making a list of words and printing it separately—which would have been too great a shock to most people—we have sprinkled them thru our book, sometimes spelling them the old way. sofaclimcs the new. thinking thus better to get your impartial o pinion, and to show you the sense of the one way and the nonsense of the other. IN THE midst of preparing our material for the press, comes the news of the awful disasters in California—the earthquakes, the tidal waves, the fires—which left a city of 300,000 people in confusion and panic; the day showing an increasing wreck and horror: the night covering the helpless city with blackness, thus doubling the dangers from nature ' s fury and adding those of plunder, rapine and murder. Such calamities cannot pass any of us without making us feel our littleness, the utter insignificance of our efforts, and the Almighty Power of Him who controls all things. We cannot understand these things. We cannot see their wisdom. We have not near the wide horizon line, nor the high view point to rejoice in them. We call them untimely, unfortunate, calamitous. We pity that such things should ever occur, but we dare not say: I his should not have happened.” The Kooltuo wishes to express its heartfelt sympathy to all those in the school, who, by these awful events, have sus¬ tained loss and suffered pain. And to the two sister schools of Berkeley and Stanford we extend sincere sympathy and commiseration in the disasters befallen them. They have been the leading schools of the West, and by their misfortune we are all afflicted. We have sent to each school members of our own and thus feel that we are sharers in their glory; ' and now sharers in their sorrow. Finally, we give sympathy to all who have been afflicted in any way by these events and whom we have been powerless to help. We give them what we are able to give financially and mentally. In their loss we feel for them, and in their brave struggles to overcome their ruin, we encourage and applaud them.

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few will marry below their class? But. my dear reader, if you think this school a place for old maids, just step into the gymnasium any recess period. There you will see the fairest of the fair—and a few of the bravest of the brave! 1 he second fairy tale, however, has a little more foundation. We do have some method work. Ways and means are suggested to us—which is more than can be said of many of those practical business schools. But the fundamental axiom of all teaching is. Know what you are going to teach before you find out how to teach it. liven when this is accom- p .shed we are not given a formula or carefully worked out theory to follow in our teaching. Indeed, the absence of such often staggers the uninitiated student. Instead of answering the question. How arc we to teach a subject to a child?” the child » mind is opened up to us and human nature is explained; with this on the one hand and knowledge on the other, the how is left a question to be answered only by the individual and dependent on that one’s peculiar environment. Of course there are some general universal principles, which have been worked out by careful observation and experiment of the greatest modern educators which are studied—practically—in the school. But as has been said before, the training of the teacher aims to reveal to him a truer, clearer, more perfect understanding of the child—physically, mentally, morally and spirlually. • ' ow 7 1 1 15 ,here ,n mis which is special, which is useless, except to teachers? What vocation loses because of a knowledge of human nature? In how much is an occupation made less profitable because those who engage in it understand men? Nothing. No. The Normal School is not a school of method and specialization. We take pupils from the eighth grade and in six years they have a standing which will admit them to the Junior Year of the State University; or from the High School, and in two years give them the same standing. Here their hearts and minds are broadened. Taking them as school chil¬ dren. anxious to become great, wise and happy, loving each other and their school, we send them out with their desire for sell-irrproveirent and happiness, changed to an eagerness to give to the world, to uplift humanity and to serve their God. 3 ? AS AMERIC ANS we claim great literature, as English-speaking people the greatest in the world. Our literature is read by more people than any other—dead languages excepted—but probably by fewer foreigners. We might also say that among the English-speaking people there is a great number of people who do not read it. Why? Principally because our spoken language is so different from our written. Maybe two-thirds of the words are spelled the way they sound; the other third any outlandish way. For instance, such words as man. horse, experiment, musical, dogma, electric, etc., are i j S ,1Cy afe P ronol j nccc b an hence are rarely misspelled. But when such words as clique, unique, receive, tired. Wednesday, etc., are required, most of us have to stop and see the word, or think of some rule or exception to some rule, before we venture to spell it. It is mainly because of this fact, this complication in our spelling system, that so many people are called illiterate, because a man uses his car and common sense, and writes business b-i-s-n-c-s.” people draw away from him and have as little to do with him as possible. Because a child is given such a word as meadow to spell, and spells it m-e-d-o,” he is kept ln after school, forced to warp his sense of fitness to comply with arbitrary incongruous rules; has his faith in naturalness badly shaken up; and what is most unfortunate, wastes precious hours of his childhood, which otherwise might have been spent out of doors winning the rights of man given in Adam’s charter. I he cause (or this confusion has long been recognized to be the wonderful way in which so many words are constructed, lo meet this difficulty wonderful rules have been formed—rules whose exceptions are as numerous as their applications, but this method has proved wonderfully useless. Only by setting apart a half hour each day for spelling lessons, and having spelling lessons in connection with every subject in the curriculum, is it possible to make respectable spellers out of most children. 14

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Glasses