Inefficiency In Public Schools

From The Spokesman-Review April 20, 1914

To the Editor of The Spokesman-Review: In my first communication I promised to show the remedy for the present inefficiency of our public school system.

We employ a corps of teachers, principals and superintendents to urge the human stream through the various grades of the course, their positions and salaries depending upon the rate of motion they are able to maintain in this stream; but there is no independent check upon their work.

This is contrary to the universal practice in all industrial and commercial establishments and is sufficient to condemn it. Specific reasons for its overthrow are not lacking. The … duller children are urged forward so rapidly that they practice all manner of deceptions to make their grades. Notwithstanding all these efforts, the forward pressure is too great and they fall out of the race.

This would soon be discovered by an independent check and the content of the course would be remodeled to suit the intelligence of the child. The great mass of useless particulars now taught would be eliminated and only what the child could permanently assimilate and use in its future activities would be taught.

The course would be shortened by at least two years and the duller child given a chance to obtain an elementary education. A proper system of classification would still enable the brighter pupils to maintain their proper progress and the present confused classification eliminated.

What proof have the people that the children are properly taught? The evidence of the system itself is negative, showing four-fifths of the pupils eliminated before the grades are completed. The outside evidence of unprejudiced source is strongly negative, the industrial and commercial establishments pronouncing the system a failure.

An educational caste is being rapidly evolved, few educators dictating the form and contents of the system and the taxpayers humbly submitting to the yoke fashioned for them by their so-called servants, fondly imagining all their sacrifices to be for the uplifting of their children, whereas, by their confidence and carelessness, they are upholding a system of child torture, designed solely for the benefit of the educator and the impoverishment of the taxpayer, one-third of the total taxation of the state being consumed in giving one-fifth of our children an elementary education, one-twenty-fifth a high school education and one-sixtieth a college education.

Is it any wonder that a vague unrest has settled permanently upon us? J.S. Davidson, Spokane

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