A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people. While we have class and sectarian schools th...e parties supporting them will not give their fullest aid toward building up the public school system. If all of the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money and energies on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals. To be a success a republic must have a homogeneous people, and to do this it must have homogeneous schools.... I grow more and more opposed to [sectarian schools].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this s...chool of affected grace and toe walking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a child is "free of neurotic symptoms" but values his freedom from fear so highly that he will never in his lifetime risk himse...lf for an idea or a principle, then this mental health does not serve human welfare. If he is "secure" but never aspires to anything but personal security, then this security cannot be valued in itself. If he is "well adjusted to the group" but secures his adjustment through uncritical acceptance of and compliance with the ideas of others, then this adjustment does not serve a democratic society. if he "adjusts well in school" but furnishes his mind with commonplace ideas and facts...then what civilization can value the "adjustment" of this child?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next to our free political institutions, our free public-school system ranks as the greatest achievement of democratic life in Ame...rica ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel ... appeared f...or an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west ... my Good Genius seemed to say,--Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day,--farther and wider,--and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee other lakes, and night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childh...ood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today's children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... much less time should be given to school, and much more to domestic employments, especially in the wealthier classes. A little... girl may begin, at five or six years of age, to assist her mother: and, if properly trained, by the time she is ten, she can render essential aid. From this time, until she is fourteen or fifteen, it should be the principal object of her education to secure a strong and healthy constitution, and a thorough practical knowledge of all kinds of domestic employments. During this period, though some attention ought to be paid to intellectual culture, it ought to be made altogether secondary in importance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school w...as taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
School days, school days; dear old golden rule days. Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic; taught to the tune of a hick'ry stic...k.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nevertheless, no school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children's b...est interests. Parents have every right to understand what is happening to their children at school, and teachers have the responsibility to share that information without prejudicial judgment.... Such communication, which can only be in a child's interest, is not possible without mutual trust between parent and teacher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »