Lacon High School - Tickler Yearbook (Lacon, IL)

Page 17 text:

LL tithingmen, kept strict watch. It is true that there may have been many complications, but the conununity was simple and their education was all that the word implies. And what of education today? XVhat of education at the crossing of many trails? VVe have tended to cast aside. from a laissez faire policy, the youth's physical and moral natures as those aspects of his life which would take care of themselves, develop as they might. Alas, they do develop more often to the eternal detriment of the youth and the community. XVe shut our children up from the world inside school buildings whose windows are so high that the children cannot see what is going on out in the world. They spend their lives irresponsibly, and, too often, never share in the coni- plex life which goes on all about them. Speak in plainer words. you say? Education implies a three-fold task- a Herculean task. Feeding and training the mind. building up the body. developing. strengthening and directing the moral nature and the will. But is this the task of the teacher alone? ls the teacher the sole educator? Sup- pose that the child goes to school from his seventh to his fifteenth year, he secures a minimum of about eight thousand hours of school work: while his hours of daily life during the same period, and not including the hours of sleep, are about eighty thousand. Think of it! One-tenth of his time in school! Hut he is in the school of life the other nine-tenths, his teachers being the household, the street companions. and that big hurly-burly of experience which we call his environment. Again-is the teacher the sole educator? Rather is every human being, either consciously or otherwise, a teacher, and the most powerful, or at least those possessing the greatest potentialities, are in the home, the father and mother., How little the average man and woman appreciate these truths. Thus the two greatest and most productive facts in the educational world are not widely known and realized upon. First, let us not neglect the threefold nature of the child. If we neglect the moral and physical, either in our schools or in the home. their mental training cannot function for the good of the individual or the community. The other great fact is the social view of education. The teacher is not the sole educator. The whole community must function in the rearing of the younger generation. Our home life must be conducive to the child's best interests: it must be wholesome and con-- genial, Our city government must be an exemplar of excellence and our community life must ever inspire the individual to greater service. Let us not deceive ourselves concerning the mission of the teacher. She must be the guide and the leader in the educational matters of the community. The school is but her oFF1ce.

Page 16 text:

ACONHIGHSCHOOL The education of the child, says Dr. Laurie, is the bringing of him up in such a way as to secure that when he is a man he will fulfill his true life-not merely his life as an industrial worker, not merely his life as a citizen, but his personal life through his work and through his citizenship. And this is as true and as all-comprehensive a definition as we may find. XYe have undoubtedly heard the phrase, Send the whole boy to school. But how many there are who fail to realize that the school of life to which the larger part of the boy still goes has unlicensed teachers, unsupervised studies. and, too often. the devil for head-master ! In pioneer days the youth did go to a real school, comprehensive along the child's threefold nature. NYe of today might place our modern palatial schools alongside of the pioneer schools of trees and boughs and say in rather a conclusive manner: See how far we are ahead of our grand- sires in matters of education. But considering modern needs and resources, were we to meet today's conditions in as complete and comprehensive a manner as those early American frontiersmen, we would have to show some- thing more than palatial piles of brick: we would have to show additional forces more conducive to human needs. In the early Puritan history of our blessed nation the life of men began in small communities which lay, perhaps. at the crossing of two Indian trails. ln such miniature family communities life was very simple and modern social institutions. the church. the government, and the school, were undif- ferentiated. The community was everything-as one family. How did these primitive communities educate their children? By building schools of brick or mortar? Hy sending their children back across the water or to thc larger towns? XYas education in these far-gone pioneer days a duty of a special one? XYas it merely going to school ? No. They gave them the oppor- tunity of growing up in the midst of the common life. They were given the opportunity of learning the bare essentials and of becoming an effective member of their little group fit to carry on the family and community name and traditions. The child's mental training, by modern standards, was pitifully narrow: but his teachers were God-fearing men, and the minister. the lawyer and the squire had personal knowledge of every boy's advance- ment. His physical training was rude and laborious. but it was manly and out of doors. and was personally looked after by the father or master, both having a direct interest in making that part of his education thorough and effective. His moral training was hard and unlovely: but, such as it was. no youth was permitted to escape it. And over all phases of the boy's daily life, the parson and those indefatigable lieutenants of his, the deacons and

Page 18 text:

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