USA > Vermont > Chittenden County > Jericho > The history of Jericho, Vermont > Part 8
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Why may we not point with loyal pride to such service-hon- ored institutions as St. Johnsbury Academy, Montpelier Seminary, Bellows Free Academy, St. Michael's College, Hopkins Hall, Troy Conference Academy, People's Academy and other similar schools that have given to our boys and girls a fitting for life and higher education that has made Vermont famous for the thorough- ness of its secondary training? Why not point to such efficient high schools as Rutland, Bellows Falls, Brattleboro, Barre, Bur- lington, Montpelier and St. Albans and announce to the universe that we are striving to bring all others up relatively to the stand- ard set by these? Why not call attention to the fact that we
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have such institutions of higher learning as the University of Vermont founded in 1791, Middlebury College established in 1800 and Norwich University started in 1834 and declare our loyalty to the state based upon the satisfaction of what our state has been educationally and what we expect it to be with the progressive march of civilization ?
The largest ground for our state loyalty, of course, lies not so much in what we have been as in what we expect to be. Our past history is a splendid inspiration but it is our possibilities of material, intellectual and moral development that should consti- tute our chief incentive to endeavor. The challenge to realize on our wonderful opportunities for growth should be the quickening spur to greater loyalty-the motive for the nurture of that loy- alty which grows by helping in the accomplishment of a worthy task.
If all these things have been done in a green tree, "what shall be done in the dry?" Our farms have not yet reached the limit of their productiveness. The law of diminishing returns has not yet begun to operate in Vermont. For nearly a half century the fertile prairie lands of the western states have had a glamour cast about them that has drawn away many of our promising young men from the state of their fathers. They have gone where they thought material wealth might easier and more quickly be found, not realizing that they were leaving "acres of diamonds" behind them in their native hills and valleys. But the days of homesteading are over and the lure of the Dakotas and Kansas and Nebraska and the farther West is not so strong as it once was. Our young men and women in coming years will catch the spirit of the new loyalty which will at once give them a due appreciation of the priceless heritage bequeathed by their ancestors and a proper understanding of the resources that lie latent in Vermont. Under the spell of this new loyalty we shall no longer offer our best young life to other states. The applica- tion of scientific methods in intensive agriculture will guarantee returns from the soil of Vermont that will multiply the volume and the value of our crops and insure the increasing self-respect that is always born of moderate prosperity.
Our brooks and creeks and rivers have not yet begun to pay the toll that may be secured from them. Our highways are not
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the standing invitation to easy travel that they may become. Our railroads and trolley lines have not all been built. Our lakes are not yet floating all the commerce they can carry. The young Vermonter with an eye open to the opportunities afforded by the development of our unequalled water-power facilities and the improvement of transportation may catch the spirit of a new loyalty that will set him to work on our great engineering prob- lems and make him invaluable in the service of a state growing continually richer by the proper utilization of its natural re- sources.
Then, when the new loyalty has brought Vermont to its own in agriculture and commerce, manufacturing industries will be multiplied, mercantile pursuits will increase, more doctors and lawyers will be needed and prosperity will smile day and night upon a people happy in the consciousness of residence in a state compelled to yield the best it has for the welfare of its citizen- ship.
But this new loyalty will do more than add to the material advancement of Vermont. Sad indeed is the condition of any people so surfeited with temporal success or so drunk with the wine of mere physical satisfaction that they shut themselves up within themselves and forget the great obligation for social ser- vice. The new loyalty should beget a larger interest in human- kind.
For centuries men have been repeating the command of the Master "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" but it is to be feared that many times these words are "as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal." Who is your neighbor of the divine conception ? He lives in the next dooryard, to be sure. He lives down the street ; he lives in the next town, in the next county, in the next state. Your neighbor sails the seas and scales the mountains. He pastures his flocks on the hillsides and waters them in the brooks of the valley. Your neighbor is the judge on the bench, the sewer digger of the streets. Your neighbor dwells on the bleak mount and plains, he toils in the cane-brakes hard by the bayous of Louis- iana. Your neighbor is the child-killing mother of Hindoostan, the almond-eyed Celestial, the flat-nosed negro, the Australian bushman, the European gentleman. Your neighbor is the raving, wild-eyed maniac of the asylum, the striped clothed convict be-
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hind prison bars. Your neighborhood is not circumscribed by the narrow limits of your own community. It reaches out to the islands of the seas and the ends of the earth-it is as broad as creation, as inclusive as the universal man. Then "love thy neighbor as thyself."
THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.
"There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the place of their self-content :
There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament : There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran- But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
"Let me live in a house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by- The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban- Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
"I see from my house by the side of the road By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears- Both parts of an infinite plan- Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.
"I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead, And mountains of wearisome height : That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night.
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But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice And weep with the strangers that moan Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone.
"Let me live in my house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish-so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat . Or hurl the cynic's ban ?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man."
Loyalty, like charity, begins at home. To grow this spirit of universal neighborhood we must cultivate a love for the men and women of our own town and state. There must be a tender heart for our poor and needy. When we realize our obligations to all mankind aright we will realize our special obligation to those who live nearer to us. This new loyalty finds its expression in public libraries and reading rooms, in the encouragement of en- tertainments of a refining character, in clean door-yards, streets and highways, in improved sanitation and conditions that pro- mote the general health.
The new loyalty will create a living church to rise upon the empty forms and ceremonies. It will insist upon constantly im- proving educational facilities all the way from the kindergarten to the college and through the University.
I have been much interested in reading an article from the pen of Professor Carl Holliday of Southwestern University en- titled "A Brief Account of Ancient Schools Written A. D. 2300." Placing himself forward at that date he says: "Recently while I was looking over some ancient books dealing with education it oc- curred to me that it might be pleasing to the readers of this good year 2300 to be told something about the schools of the early days-say about the year 1913. With this idea in mind I set myself to the pleasant task of investigating the old records in the volumes of the government library in our city and hoping to sur- prise the enlightened folk of my own time I myself became amaz-
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ed at the crudeness, the barbarity and absolute cruelty of the former methods of training children.
I found that the school buildings were indeed strange con- trivances. They were frequently built three, four or even five stories high and even in that unobservant age, the dangers of fire were so evident that each teacher was required to put the pupil through what was known as firedrills. My readers may wonder why in the face of such perils the structures were erected in that fashion. So far as I have been able to discover the rea- son lay in the stinginess of the public. They could not spare the land. Space in the cities was indeed rather high even in that day, but the price was nothing compared with the values now set on the same areas by the Government Commissioners of valuation, and yet the public of the twentieth century cooped up children in tall 'fire-traps' lest the city tax be increased a few cents per individual. Indeed it was not until near the close of the century that various states began to make one- storied school houses obligatory. Think of it! Instead of enter- ing the low broad structures of today and looking out upon shady lawns and play grounds, the poor little rascals of those ancient times climbed up above where the tree tops should have been and regularly practiced saving their lives from dangers brought on by the close-fisted citizens.
It was not until about the year two thousand that it was made unlawful to place another structure within three hundred feet of a school-house and even then some of the old-fashioned people complained that the world was being given up to the children.
And can I describe to you the interiors of one of these an- cient schools-the barrenness, the soul-killing regularity and the utter desolation of it all? The boys and girls were required to sit in what were called desks, (A desk was a wooden seat with a wri- ting board attached to the seat in front) and these desks were screwed to the floor! ' I found in the record of the proceedings of the Boston School Board that in the year 1940 a gentleman asked the members if their chairs and dining-tables and pianos were screwed to the floor in their homes and they informed him that regularity in the seating had to be preserved or else there could be no discipline. Ah! discipline was a great matter in those days. The Pedagogs of the twentieth century forgot that soul
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growth and not discipline was the aim of education. These desks were all built alike, looked equally ugly and were apparently an invention of his Satanic Majesty. They were placed in regu- lar rows so that every pupil had to look squarely to the front and woe to the youngster who cast his eyes to the right or to the left. The cruelty of the system was nothing short of astounding.
How the little ones kept from going stark mad would be the wonder of our day. The walls were almost invariably a glar- ing white or a dirty grey, and were as blank as a desert. The idea had not occurred to school boards that a tint of green or other restful color might save many an eye and brain. There was absolutely no place for the eye to rest itself, all was alike. Doubt- less you are thinking that the tired youngsters could at least gain refreshment by gazing now and then out of the windows, but no, the windows in numerous schools were purposely placed above the heads of the children so that their attention might not be dis- tracted from their books. Even if they could have looked out they would have seen no flowers, no trees, no fountains and no birds only tall grim storehouses and ugly, smoky factories. Oh! it was pitiful. Seldom indeed were there any pictures on the walls and such as there were, were not in colors, but simply plain black and white copies. The custom of painting patriotic scenes and beautiful views upon the walls did not prevail until about two thousand and twenty, and even then, some parents angrily declared the children were sent to school to look at their books and not at. the walls. They had not discovered that an ounce of inspiration is worth a pound of fact. Growing flowers and potted ferns and palms may have been in the rooms a's now: but I could find no record of such a thing. AH! I wonder what the poor little boys and girls of the twentieth century did with the eyes God gave them to find beauty with. How those eyes must have suffered ! Because of the custom of building school-houses several stories high each room did not have a glazed skylight as now but the light came in, day after day, from a row of high uncurtained windows. The result of this was numerous cross-eyed, wall- eyed and weak-eyed children and the condition became so pitiful that about the year 1910 many cities appointed school inspectors of eyes. But it was not until long afterwards that the true reme- dies were applied. Even after the children left the school-
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rooms there was little eye-rest; for in those days it was custom- ary to make pavements of white or light gray concrete, and to walk a mile on these on a bright day was nothing sort of torture. Toward the close of the twentieth century the green and dark blue pavement so common now came into use. One of the comic papers of 1991 stated that in earlier days aldermen painted the town red, but now were painting it green. I tried to discover the meaning of this, but nowhere could I find that aldermen had been so lavish with paint, except white-wash, which was mentioned by numerous papers.
A most cruel requirement of the early twentieth century was that of night work on the part of the boys and girls. Whereas now it is against the law for parents to allow a child under fifteen to read at all after nine o'clock, the children of those days were loaded with studies to be carried on at home and in the higher grades the young people often times boasted of sitting up until one and two o'clock to prepare for examinations. I happened to find a newspaper, printed in 1908, that a member of the Texas Legislature proposed a bill to make such night work unlawful; but his colleagues declared that this was only a blow at a business concern then known as the Standard Oil Company and his bill was laughed down. Almost a century later the wisdom of his idea was realized by all thinkers.
As I read these musty old records, I wondered why every- body did not go blind in those times. All the school books were then printed on white paper and often a glossy white at that. The letters were invariably in black, thus the little fellows read and read until they must have been haunted by specks of black and white. Today only a minute per cent. of our college boys and girls are bothered with spectacles; but some pictures I found among the records lead me to believe that the student body, es- pecially the professors of the twentieth century were partners in a glass factory.
In those strange years the preservation of health was a very unimportant matter. That rare disease known as tuberculosis or consumption was most common then, and children afflicted with it sat in the same room as the other children. In 1909 an open air school for such unfortunates was established in Chicago and the newspapers in that year show that numerous taxpayers 7
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looked upon it as a down-right waste of money. The lack of playgrounds, the scarcity of trees and plants, the dust caused by unoiled streets and by the use in the schools of chalk for wri- ting on blackboards, the defective heating systems, the germs hid- den in dirty wooden floors, and the custom of sleeping with closed windows, all these, at length, made this disease such a scourge that about the year 1950 the whole nation spent millions upon millions in destroying the sources of the pestilence.
It may seem ridiculous and yet it is really true that in the twentieth century laws had to be made compelling children to go to school. Part of the resistance came from parents, but most of it from the children themselves. Whereas the child of today loves the activities of education and looks upon the school as its second home, I find that the normal boy of four centuries ago dreaded and even hated the institution.
At length it was discovered that the cramped position long maintained in sitting at a desk would make any natural creature restive or dull or vicious, and by the year 1975 all schools had adopted a curriculum in which each hour of mental work was followed by an hour of physical work such as carving, moulding, gardening, etc. There was an astonishing decrease, not only of misbehavior, but also of truancy, and I suppose there has not been a case of punishment for unnecessary absence in a hundred years.
Besides the total over-sight of animal activities there were other causes to make school hateful. The end of all teaching in the twentieth century seems to have been facts, facts, facts. In- spiration was a neglected factor. In their search for facts- which were of minor value in literature and arts-they crushed all the rich blood out of the subject, and the boys did not care for the dry bones that remained. About the middle of the twen- tieth century teachers of the various literatures began to call music, painting and sculpture to their aid, and now as we know, every literary course has its musical recitals to illustrate such matters as the poetry of Shakespeare, Byron, Haine and Tennyson. But these changes did not come without a struggle. When in 1950 the University of Chicago appointed a musician to assist the instructors in literature, the papers of the city an- nounced the fact in sarcastic head lines, while one presented the hideous cartoon picturing a professor of English singing Omar
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Khayyam's "Rubaiyat" to the accompaniment of an Italian organ grinder.
Music, it seems, was looked upon as a fashionable frivolity for women and most men received theirs through the now anti- quated phonograph. Not until about the year 2000 was it thor- oughly realized that this branch of learning had as important an influence upon the growth of the perfect man as Mathematics, Literature or History. About that date, however, the various states made the teaching of music compulsory, and for the past two hundred years every school building has had its school musician to play and explain the best quality of music daily.
As I read the strange books and strange newspapers of four centuries ago the fact dawned upon me that there were then no school or church theaters. Could it be possible? Vigorous search brought to light the statement that in the first decade of the twentieth century a New York church made a feeble effort along this line, but had been so violently condemned by the other churches that the effort was abandoned. Many preachers pro- nounced the histrionic art an invention of the devil, but as time passed, the Kindergarten pointed out that children loved to act ; dances imitating the dances of animals were introduced; and from this strange beginning the little ones were allowed to pro- gress until today I suppose there is no city school in the world without its theater. Strange to say, in the ancient days students simply read and commented upon the dramatic masterpieces and were not encouraged to act them.
Is it any wonder that boys ran away and risked receiving painful whippings? There was so little of genuine human in- terest. I found that young people were compelled to study Zoology and yet no town was compelled by law, as now, to main- tain a museum or Zoological garden. Private concerns called 'Circuses' collected large numbers of wild animals and gave ex- hibitions under vast tents and these seem to have satisfied the human craving in the pupils. These strange shows apparently served a good purpose; but I was startled to learn that they were condemned by most of the clergy, and that some ministers lost their positions for being seen there by the church members. Such was the stupidity of the 'good old times.' . Ought we to be surprised to discover the schools were then open but nine
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months of the year? It is a marvel that all the children were not dead or turned idiots even in that space. Not until 2020 was a public school kept open twelve successive months and that was at Manila, Philippine Islands by petition of the children themselves. I found this petition in a Manila newspaper, and one statement by those old time children struck me as characteristic of the atti- tude of our own little boys and girls. 'We want to continue go- ing because we know there are so many surprising discoveries in store for us.'
Ah! there were many strange facts I learned among those dusty old records. How ridiculous some of the Congressional speeches sound, with their boasts of education, enlightenment and culture! Surely we of the twenty-third century have reached a plane of mentality far beyond the comprehension of that dark and cruel era four centuries ago. For in its mistakes, its miserliness, its thoughtlessness, its savage unkindness that twentieth century must be classed among the Dark Ages of Education."
Perhaps Professor Holliday is somewhat cynical and his criticisms of the present day educational methods may not be al- together just. Nevertheless, I believe he has not overdrawn, in the slightest degree the happy condition of affairs as our posterity will find them four centuries hence. If future generations are to advance as we have advanced beyond the generations gone be- fore, those of us responsible for the educational leadership of the present day must spare no effort to make our full contribution to this splendid forward movement toward the goal of perfec- tion. We must raise high our standards and strive by all pos- sible means to reach them.
The sad condition of many of the schools of the present day depicted by Professor Holliday let it be remembered is a. con- dition existing in all the states. It is a general condition. It is not peculiar to Vermont. The spirit of the new loyalty in Ver- mont, however, may give to Vermont the honor of being a pioneer in the educational forward movement which is inevitable in America.
Last of all the new loyalty will guarantee the rights of grow- ing childhood. It will sound the death knell of the iniquity of child labor. Up with the rights of childhood! Away from the black shadows of the night of infantile oppression! All hail to
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the radiant dawn that throws its gleams of brightness athwart the morning of the twentieth century to illumine .
THE LAND OF BOY.
"A wonderful land is the land of boy,
Where the hands on the clock mark the moments of joy, Where the hills are sugar, the mountains are cake, And the rivers flow into an ice-cream lake ; Where candy grows on the forest trees And the fairies dwell with their mysteries :
The land of boy-away, away Through the happy valleys of Golden Day!
"The land of boy is a dear delight,
Where the sun shines sweetly and soft and bright ; Where the air is filled with the robin's song 'And the heart of venture beats bold and strong ;' Where hope's grave star burns clean and fair And the wine of the summer is in the air : The land of boy-away, away, The road winds down to the Golden Day !
"There are tops and trinkets and marbles and books, Penknives, putty and fishing hooks, Printing presses and railroad trains, Wheelbarrows, wagons and driving reins ;
Boats and whistles and hoops and skates, Sledges and sponges and drawing slates, The land of boy-away, away, Over the hills of the Child-at-Play!
"The land of boy is a sunny place, Where rosy cheeks and a smiling face, Where romp and laughter and chatter and gleam, Go round and round till the meadows dream And the stars come out and the golden West Is red where the sun has gone to rest ; The land of boy-away, away
To the wand of fairy and elf and fay!
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"Merry games and the venture heart In the land of boy are a living part : Castle building and ships that sail On the pirate main and the paths of whale; Hope and love and beauty and gleam- All, all are a part of the boy-land dream, To the land of boy I long to stray Through the happy valleys of Golden Day !"
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