USA > Indiana > Grant County > Centennial history of Grant County, Indiana, 1812 to 1912 : compiled from records of the Grant county historical society, archives of the county, data of personal interviews, and other authentic sources of local information > Part 46
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95
How this movement started, who did it or when he did it is not. important. The vital faet is that such a movement is under way and a good many Marion and Grant county people have been considering it for some time.
In the first place there is a necessity for more of the get-together spirit among the people -- among all the people. This applies to those who have had few opportunities as well as to those who have been more favored by fortune. Class distinctions are not to be attributed alto- gether to any one class.
The leaders in this movement propose to use the school buildings For meetings to consider anything and everything that pertains to the well- being of the community, not because they are school buildings but be- cause these buildings belong to the people and should be available and because they are supposed to be located so that they are most convenient for the people of any one neighborhood to reach.
A social center has been described as "a place where the people can come together on a basis of absolute equality for the promotion of those things in which all have a common interest ; a place where the people of a neighborhood can mert for recreation, entertaiment or instruction and for the discussion of the problems of individual, municipal and national life." It seems to us that this should give a clear idea of the purpose. We find it in a pamphlet issued by the South Bend Chamber
310
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
of Commerce, which has consented to act as a sort of city center of the neighborhood centers.
At South Bend, where this movement has made perhaps more head- way than anywhere else in the state, the school buildings are used because the people not only own these buildings but have a sense of ownership. They feel more at home in these buildings perhaps than they would in any other. "They can meet on common ground, laying aside all political, religions, racial, class or other prejudices."
In most places this idea is comparatively new. It is so in Marion, of course. There has been little publie mention of this movement, com- paratively little thinking has been done about it, and therefore the first thing to be done is to get to thinking about it. The Chronicle proposes to do what it can to help keep the matter in mind. It has not been a monomaniac on the subject but it is ready to become one, for the reason that it can think of nothing under the sun that in the long run will bring to the community so much good with so little expenditure of money, time and vitality. It regards this movement as one of the most beneli- cent things that has come up for attention in the history of the country. It is the spirit of the old New England town meetings, brought to bear when it is greatly needed and when the facilities for promoting various interests are a hundred times what they were in New England when the New England meetings began to prove so effective.
There are a few already in Marion who have been thinking of this movement and there will be more a year hence. Of course these people do not expect a transformation to come out of it in thirty days --- nor in sixty. They realize-most of them-that it will take time and a good deal of it even to get the people to consider such a thing. It will take time to cultivate the habit of keeping the subject in mind, but the time will come, nevertheless, when the people will not only be thinking about it Imt they will be ready to make the most of the opportunity.
The Chronicle will be a zealous and industrious servant of the cause for the simple reason that it regards the movement as the best thing that has happened or is going to happen for many a day. The subject will probably have attention again tomorrow.
And next day the author of "The Mind Life," for he is a student, added :
We have so long been used to seeing our fine school buildings dark in the evening and empty at all times outside of school hours, that we have been slow to realize that in these buildings we have an equipment the value of which can be multiplied to an enormous degree, and this with- ont interfering with their value as schools. In fact one of the most obvious benefits of the social center movement is that it forms a direet link between the school and the home-to the benefit of both .- South Bend Chamber of Commerce.
Here is a point that a good many people have never thought of- hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in buildings that are used It a few hours in the day for half the days in the year. There is not a business enterprise in the land that could live if no more use than this were made of its equipment. These buildings might be used three times as much as they are and still be in use less time than most buildings in successful business enterprises.
One point therefore in favor of the use of these buildings for social centers is that it provides a way to obtain additional returns from an investment. Stated in business terms, the additional profit compared with the additional investment would be many thousand per cent.
This point has been considered by many school organizations and in order to obtain additional returns in many places vacation schools and
311
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
night schools have been established. When these are properly conducted instead of interfering with the day schools they contribute to the sue- eess of the entire school institution, and there is no reason why they should not be as properly conducted as the day schools.
A wide variety of other uses are now being made of school buildings. It is said that in New York city in one year lectures in the school buildings were presented on nearly two thousand different subjeets to audiences that aggregated more than a million people. In many places an effort is made to provide in schools proper forms of amusement and instruction for children and young people who are out of school, such as stereopticon and moving picture entertainments, gymnastie training, debating and singing societies, moot courts, junior common councils, legislative bodies, ete. Game rooms have been provided for the evening use of young people, and branch libraries have been installed which serve as reading rooms for the public week-day evenings and Sunday after- noons during the winter season.
Then come the adult organizations "formed to promote civie friendli- ness and intelligent public spirit." This is the form of social center work that was started at South Bend two years ago. Other up-to-date towns have started a similar movement. This is the form urged in Marion now.
In a few years this will become a mighty movement. The first step, of course, must be a short one. The first thing to be done is for the people to begin "turning it over" in their minds. This stage is bound to come in Marion. It has already begun to manifest itself and the time will come some of these days when there will be one of these organiza- tions set on foot. It may be in a few weeks, or it may be months or it may be years. There is no reason why it should not be in a few weeks, except that most people in Marion have not been thinking about the matter one way or another. When they get to thinking about it, they will see possibilities in it and the more thinking they do on the subject the more these possibilities will roll up. The truth is they are almost. boundless, but it will require years to demonstrate this.
Some of the people here are already turning this over in their minds, Let them talk it. Let others begin thinking on the subject. There is no better subject. It is too soon to begin any specific movement. The first thing is the chewing process -- let the mind chew upon it. Then the rest will follow in due time.
Writing on the subject, "Schools as Social Centers," Mrs. C'ora Bennett Stephenson produces the following argument :
In the Globe for January 28, 1912, Dr. Frank Crane wrote: "The root trouble with our entire educational system, including the public schools and universities, is that they are not democratie. Being an institution, the school is cramped by the dead hand of the monarchie, raste-invested past. The school ought to prepare the child for work. It should prepare him to be a useful citizen. The school should study the child and develop his natural gifts. I should seek to make him conform to some theoretical standard."
We will assume that the need to keep our young people off the streets and out of the alleys and vulgar and vicious places of amusement is worth the best energies of the best blood in Marion. We may not by preaching formal moral precepts or by threat of punishment save our young; this method has been stubbornly weighed in the balance and found wanting. Nature abhors a vacuum in no place so consistently as in the emotions of a developing Imman. We must feed the famishing affection of our young or they will eat tilth. The moral needs of the child cannot be separated from his intellectual or physical ones; the individual is hap-
312
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
pily a synthesis. The school umst face the problem of competition with the streets and alleys that are always open and are always inviting with their prospect of freedom of motion. The time has come when the parents of Marion as one body must insist that the public school throw off its incubus of educational nonsense and adapt itself to the actual human needs of our children. Our schools lack effect because the teachers have spent their vital forees trying to perform a miracle; they have tried to substitute their own will for the motivity of the child. This futile, cruel, extravagant struggle has gone on until the most conservative among us is inclined to intervene between the children and the outgrown tradition that eripples and degrades them.
That the process is futile may be indicated by the fact that parents that can afford to give their children other opportunities, do not. as a rule send their children to their home school. They send their children to other towns in search of means of education, at the same time they sup- port an institution here that is, from the standpoint of the opportunity . offered and the funds consnmed, more expensive than the best school in the country.
The members of the school board are foremost among those that recog- nize and deplore this situation but they minst be supported by intelli- gent public opinion before they can effeet the reform that the condi- tions demand.
The futility of our present high school system is further indicated by the fact that when the janitor locks the doors of the building in the evening, the institution ceases to exist for Marion. The teachers and these young people ought by right of their high privilege be the center and heart of on civil and social life. The high school body sustains this vital relation to the townspeople in Gary, Indiana, and in immmer- able small cities in other parts of ludiana.
The ernelty comes in the lack of clean pleasure in the lives of the young people, in their lack of opportunity for self-development and in the condition of impotence that the average young man and woman linds himself and herself in when each stands, diploma in hand, facing the bread-and-butter question.
Gary, Indiana, for instance, meets the social and hence the moral needs of her young people at less cost per capita than we spend on our young people. The study of the schools of Gary is a subject too big to enter into here. A postal card will bring a hindle of literature to anyone inquiring, in which facts are stated, photographs presented and figures given.
The ery may come that we cannot do as Gary does because we have not the Gary equipment. And for answer we say that equipment helps, it is true; and material equipment inevitably follows demonstration of need as light comes with the sun. But our trouble is ghosts. Our chil- dren want a common meeting place ; a great democratie club house where they can do as they please. And they are told: Go home and enjoy yourselves. They want to meet and dance. Dancing is a wholesonte natural form of recreation; all normal vertebrates dance. All social bodies in Marion dance. Yet our high school does not dance. Where could they dance ? asks the skeptic. In the assembly room. Why should we sacrifice such a pleasant thing as dancing just for the tradition of rows of desks serewed, to the floors. The boys in high school would gladly put the floor of the auditorium in condition for dancing and keep it so if they were allowed to dance there. Movable seats could be placed quickly each day by groups of students and personal property could be conserved in the lockers. In Gary no child owns a seat. The seat is the property of the school body and is practically always in use. One of the
313
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
leaks in our high school is due to the attempt to demonstrate individual ownership.
And this brings us to the idea of the high school as a social center.
Miss Addams told the writer that the hardest problem that had to be handled at Thul House was to keep the children of the well-to-do away. If only one-tenth of the young folks that would go nightly to Hull House in costly motors for democratic, simple recreation were admitted there would not be room for the poor whose needs the settlement house was founded to meet.
The numerous adult clubs and lodges in Marion are our strongest arguments for the need of some common, democratie soil on which our young folks may meet socially.
All the Masons that are about to dedicate their beautiful temple have comfortable and even some of them sumptuous homes. Yet they revog- nize the need of a common playground. The members of the various lodges and of the Golf and Country Clubs also have good homes, yet these bodies support their common meeting place without questioning their right to do so.
And with an even more imperious need the young people ery for a decent place to go to that is always open, where the responsibilities are shared equally, and where there can be no hurtful comparisons of the individual standards of living. The individual homes are too small to take care of an indefinite number of young people, and there are invalids, old persons and infants and any mumber of reasons why the homes are not always open to the young folks.
The high school is the legitimate social home of all the young people in Marion, whether they attend the day classes or not.
And what would these young people do if they were allowed to meet in the high school building for social recreation ?
First of all they would develop a high school orchestra and have dances, probably every Friday and Saturday night. They would agree on some more economical manner of arranging the seating of students in order to have a living room. They would stack up some of the goods in the basement ; they would utilize the atties to provide rooms with conches and gay cushions, phonographs and punching bags. They would form some sort of common council and decide on closing time for Friday night and for Saturday night. They would also thresh out the problem of whether smoking would be allowed in the building. Suppose since most of the boys help themselves to their fathers' tobacco supply they did decide to smoke in the building. Very soon the insurance anthorities would wake up to the fact that the liability to fire was increased hugely by the possibility of cigarette stubs being thrown into a corner. Also the physiology teacher would bring a little guinea pig to class -- a funny little pink and white animal that dearly loves life. The teacher would shave a little area on the stomach of the guinea pig and place on that bare spot a dab of nicotine taken from any high school boy's jimmy pipe. The little pig would eurl up its toes and die there and then. She would take frog-spawn and kill the life of thousands of future green- backs by dropping it into a mild solution of tobacco juice. After that just as they did at Gary -- the boys would enjoin themselves from smok- ing in the high school building without doubt.
Besides dancing there would be play-acting. The heroies of Dido building her funeral pyre in her atrium at Carthage would furnish the basis for a gorgeous drama. The class in classies would meet with the sewing and manual arts classes, and by studying the euts of old statnes and wall decorations would make costumes and stage settings as valuable historically as any that the great Irving ever brought out
314
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
of his workshop in London, The stimulation to original endeavor that even this relatively insignificant feature would effect is incalculable.
The cooking school would not only serve good refreshments at cost at these functions, but they would probably be stimulated into turning real housekeepers and attach the problem of simple noon lunches for the dozens who would prefer to stay at the high school at noon if they were allowed to make it an hour of social recreation. On washing day and on cleaning day and when Miss Maria comes to sew and the day that mother entertains her elub are not very pleasant days for the school boy to come home to lunch. Yet he must eat; and he would like to play also.
Some one may object that if we allowed dancing in the high school, might we not expect every form of the terpsichorean art from the tango to a certain African dance that we cannot spell? The answer is no.
There is no period in life when humanity is more refined, more intolerant of the ngly and more receptive of beauty than youth. If a high school girl were told she waddled when she walked, she would wear her muscles sore pratieing before a mirror in order to take the suggestion of a duck from her carriage. No more would she dance like a bear, a rabbit or a barnyard lowl.
Waltzing and two-step are indeed monotonous, and that class of dane- ing known as square dancing is not popular because it is rare that the requisite number of good dancers are found in one "set" of six or eight. They lack the rhythm moreover that the round dances furnish. Rhythm is the essence of dancing, and we will have it.
There is a very simple way of avoiding monotony in dancing. We haye already in Marion persons who would be only too happy to go to the high school and teach folk-dances that meet the emotional require- ment of young people so wholesomely. This service would be given gladly free of charge. Also no doubt that some of the young men and women whose parents could afford it wouldl go to the city and learn such beautiful dancing as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Gertrude Iloffman, Adelaide Genee and other dancers offer for instruction, and, coming back home, train others and thus develop a branch of art that has found legitimate encouragement since the world began.
How many traveling men with youngsters of their own at home would miss the opportunity when lounging about the hotels evenings to go up and enjoy the fun with the young folks in the school building on the hill? They might like to punch the bag and tell stories of when lleck was a pup to a crowd of eager-eyed boys in the room with the phonograph and the cushions. How many quiet, middle-aged women among us left companionless and with lonely evenings would not trudge up the hill just to look in on the young people?
We want the high school opened at least two evenings in the week as a social center, unrestricted except by the free contracts that the young people themselves decide to make.
While some of the foregoing may be prophesy rather than history, straws serve to tell the way the wind is blowing in the educational as in the physical world, and the historian was interested in the 1913 com- mencement productions of three Marion high school graduates who grap- pled the questions of the day, Fred Smith dealing with "Conservation of Human Life and Energy, " but without localizing his treatise, and Panl Seiberling writing on the romantic side of business, showed careful thought, saying "business is the supplying of human wants." But because Earl Boxell has looked conditions so squarely in the face in his "Vocational or Liberal ?" inquiry, his oration-he delivered it without manuscript-is reproduced as a strong plea for the continuation of the
315
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
present educational system. The high school fitted the young man for his undertaking, and he says :
Every year it is the habit according to the ancient enstom in vogne at school commencements to import some speaker, whom we have never heard of before, to perform the annual task of unloading upon our youthful shoulders the responsibilities of life. It is indeed an enviable privilege to listen to people older and wiser. I have no fault to lind with the system. But on such occasion youth always feigns an air of polite interest and reverence which is not genuine. Which goes to make an embarrassing situation.
The status of the speaker is more honorary than real. If it were a real class address he would be forced to turn his back upon the audience and talk to the graduates upon the platform, whereas the address is gen- erally to the audience. In either case those behind the speaker naturally become restless. And so our commencement is a departure from the rule.
Asking your indulgence for the frailty and mistakes of youth, I will attempt not to solve some great question of state, or religion, but merely to present from a student point of view a question of current interest now very much before the public. The question regards the character and the work of our public schools. It arises from the fact that of recent years our schools have been the butt of violent criticism on the ground that they do not prepare the student for real life. There is a great elamor for change and the proponents of the change are putting forward vocational training as opposed to liberal arts. Such a change would mean a radical difference from the system as at present. The two alternatives are very different. The present system would eling to the studies as we now have them, while the vocational would turn our schools into shops. It would substitute laundry work, bricklaying, farming, etc., for such sudies as Latin, Greek and geometry.
The purpose of education is of course to prepare the student for complete life. Education is a never-ending process and no one ever becomes perfectly educated. Learning is not involved in our education. Learning is the enterprise of a lifetime. The question is simply this: Shall our schools be a place of mental discipline, and if they are, shall the training be a general training of the faculties and a general awaken- ing to the issues and interests of the modern world, or a preliminary initiation into the drill of a partienlar vocation, which will best serve to prepare one for complete life ?
As I said before this movement toward vocationalizing the schools is rather precipitate. It contemplates too great a change, too much of a good thing. I once read of a process for maturing wine. The inventor had figured that contact with the air was the chemical cause of the ripen- ing of wine. This contact could ovenr only at the surface, consequently if any way could be found for multiplying the points of contact between the air and the surface of the liquid. the process must be thereby short- ened. His device was to take the wine to the top of a tower and spray it downward through the air four hundred feet. In this way, raw, new port must become fine old wine in the space of five minutes. This scheme for the vocationalizing the schools appears to me to have some of the deffects of the device. Our educational processes need the slow ripening of time.
Educational processes should bear a very intimate relation to the life of our day. There is a great challenge to effort in the modern world. Individuals are yoked together in modern enterprise because no enter- prise stands alone or independent, but is related to every other and feels changes in all parts of the globe. The man who understands only some
316
HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY
single process, some single piece of work which he is set to do, will never do anything else, and is apt to be deprived at any time of the chance to do that because processes change, industry undergoes sud- den revolutions. New inventions and alterations in processes throw acenstomed methods and specially trained men out of date without pause or pity. The man specially trained may become an unskilled laborer over night. Then if he lacks a general education such as our liberal arts course provides, he lacks the power to adjust himself to changed conditions. His knowledge does not extend beyond a certain point. The particular thing he has been taught to do may become unter- essary or so changed that he can not adjust himself to the change.
The school is meant. I believe, to stimulate in as many students as possible the power to organize and guide. Below the higher ranks of generalship in affairs there is needed For the execution of the varied busi- ness of the world a very large number of men with the capacity and readiness to execute a whole series of faculties; faculties for planning as well as technical skill, the ability to handle men as well as tools, faculties of adaptation as well as precise execution. Education should give the power to acquire a working knowledge of many things, to grasp a given situation readily, quickly and intelligently. Quick comprehension and gnick action are demanded by the modern worldl.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.