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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 1903)
The American Public School HE American people have created a school system which la publla in the largest and best sense of that word. It is education by tho people and by the whole people. because toward Its proper and autUciunt maintenance ail the people contribute through public taxation. This educational tax is levied for precisely the same reason that any other tax is levied; not because the taxpayer wishes something, not because It is necessary and desirable for the chil dren, but because it Is absolutely essential to the common welfare. It Is education for the people then, as well as by the people; and for the whole people Its benefits are large and communal, and are not restricted to Individuals nor to any class. The results are neither Isolated nor segmental, but fill the entire circle. Being education by the people and for the people, it must be education of the people, and of the whole people. The real ground for this, the most important characteristic of American public education, is not always clearly discerned. A great privilege, desirable, stimulating, helpful all this and more Is confidently asserted and readily granted. But that this education ought to be absolutely universal, and why this Is an imperative necessity these are sometimes considered quite other questions, not admitting so positive an answer. Tet even a casual examination of the conditions of life in this country will give us proof of the wisdom of this provision for general education, and a more careful study of the prerequisites of our comfort, convenience, safety and success will strengthen the conviction that this great system Is the very cornerstone upon which we build the work of each day. The most ordinary experiences of the average citizen will furnish excellent and entirely satis factory illustrations. I draw a check eiich month In favor of ne of the Astors, for the rent of the apart (Copyrighted, 1903, by T. a McClure.) j , yiri utile ui me mammoin is reia I " I tively near our own time. Today I thA Tiinfflialnn hnntar iti 4 1 Lena river occasionally feeds hia dogs with their frozen flesh. Many things prove that man once hunted the mammoth; certain mammoth bones that have been marked by the work of human hands point to this. Just In the time when the first mam moth was found (100 years ago) the eye of the Investigator had begun to become keen for the age and the sequence of the zoological layers of the earth. The great clenco of paleontology, destined to decide many questions, had begun to make its way. And parallel with it, there advanced Arctic exploration. It was discovered that certain stone that occurred as far north as the seventy-fifth parallel of north latitude belonged to the so-called Silurian age, an age that takes us back to immensely ancient periods of the earth's history. And in these remains were found the fossil remnants of coral reefs. There was nothing extraordinary in the fact that the coral animals had built up their reef-towers even In the prehistoric past; but there was something extraordin ary In the dicovery of them in Arctic re gions. The coral animals today dwell without exception in warm sess. They die If the average of temperature sinks below 18 or 20 degrees Celsius. But these prehistoric reefs of the Silurian age are on the Lan caster Sound, clos-i by the first wintering place of the Franklin expedition. How could tropical creatures ever have felt at home there? There was a time somewhat later than the Silurian time. It was the coal period. The name In itself conjures up a picture of luxuriant vegetation, for coal Is nothing but fossil, vegetable growth. In this period, as In the Silurian, birds and mammals had not begun to exist The plants were com paratively low In the scale; they were all relatives of our ferns, snake moss and HIEF cxperti In rtild studv and Infant psychology are men. The amount of valuable advice and directions given to mothers by good, motherly men u .iirnri,. Ing. Whenever there la a congress of mothers. Dr. Granville Stanley Hall and Dr. Hamilton Wright Mabie are aure to un load stores of mother lore upon their listen era. Such Is the unfailing wisdom of men. The infants of today must be old before their time. Much Is expected of babes to whose welfare so many great masculine minds are contributing. Dr. H. C. Carpenter lectured at a meet ing of Philadelphia mothers the other day. He told them "How to Take Care of the Baby." and he showed that usually the baby is far from well taken care of. Moth ers are not serious enough. " 'Don't play with the baby.' Nothing- ment occupied by my family and myself. In a certain way, we recognise our obligation to this gentleman for the financial wisdom and enterprise which erected the building. But our dally com fort and convenience depend far more upon the active and intelligent ministrations of the engineer, the fireman, the night watch man, the elevator boys, the cleaners, the gardener, the telephone girls, the super intendent, and that small army of people generally classed as "minor employes." In an earlier day, the conditions of life did not demand this service, or such as was necessary was rendered by a single person under our Immediate direction, or by mem bers of the family. The legitimate demands of modern life make a continuance of the old way simply Impossible. Within the apartment itself much of the smooth running of the domestic machinery Is due to the only too often neglected and quite too generally considered negligible maid. If she Is capable and faithful, all is well; if otherwise, otherwise most em phatically! Infinitely more is left to her Judgment and discretion than was once the rule; necessarily, since tho entirely proper demands upon the time and thought of the women of the family have increased in number and have changed in character quite as much as have the demand-) upon men. It Is no more possible nor economic In the tchnlcal sense of that word for my wife to prepare our meals or to personally assist In the work of the laundry than It Is for me to clean the sidewalks or shoel in coal. Either of us could do either to meet an emergency but that is quite an other story. When we fare forth from our apartment similar conditions obtain. I know littlo or nothing about the directors and officers of the urban railways, though it is not hard to understand that much dopends upon their large-mlndedness and administrative ability. But I am brought Into direct con When Elephants Lived at the North pewter grass. There were no oaks, no palms, no beeches, no gaudy flower-plants. And such coal layers are found far In the northernmost north. Quite near those coral reefs of the Silurian period lie coal fields In which the fossils are clearly like those of the European and American coal. There can be no doubt that on the Lan caster Sound, as on Nova Zembla and Spltzbergen, In the forgotten past, there once stood forests one is tempted to say tropical forests. Tho existence of forests of any kind in the latitude of 75 degrees north would have been out of the question had the climatic conditions of today ruled there then. The evidence produced by the collabora tion of paleontology and Arctic exploration was not exhausted with these discoveries; the most convincing testimony was still to come. ' When an English expedition under Nares explored Grlnnell Land, fossil plants were found which the great Swiss paleontologist, Oswald Heer, afterward examined and classified. They were not plants of the coal period, but plants from the tertiary period. The tertiary period Is nearer to us than the Silurian or the coal period. At that time the fern forests had vanished from Europe and North America and had been replaced by true foliage trees. The mammals had appeared, in highly grotesque forma. In Grlnnell Land about thirty different species of plants, dating to that period, were fotmd. And from them Heer con structed the following picture of the Polar regions of that time: A aea with rich, three-decked shores. On the water swim the leafy plants of water flowers. Reeds fringe the rims of the lakes. Beyond them stand lindens, elms, many kinds of poplars and birches, hazel bushes, snowballs and evergreens, such as firs, cedars, and particularly the awamp cypress that Is found now in the southern parts of the United States These plants require a mean temperature today higher by 28 degrees than that which exists now in Grlnnell Land. How the Modern Baby Has Been Improved could be more Injurious to the Infant'. nervous system than to excite it with the customary entertainments with which fond mothers and admiring friends bore the help less victim. It is a common error to Imagine that because the child responds with a wonder-look, a laugh, or even a shriek of apparent delight, that It Is being amused. Quite the contrary it Is not only being plagued, but Is sustaining. In nine cases out of ten, an irreparable Injury." Why are there not more Shakespeare, Bacons, Mablea and Carpenters? Because most babies are irreparably Injured. Baby'a Intellectuals are not properly and system atically developed. He may seem to be enjoying himself when he cooa and crows and shrieks with apparent delight, but he is not. He Is pained. In Isolation and aloofness he Is trying to atudy his sur roundings ana the psychology of his nurse Prof. James II. Canficld, Formerly of Nebraska University, in Collier's Weekly tact with the conductors and motormcn and I have a constant and keen sense of my obligation to them, and to the In spectors and starters and switchmen and signalmen, and to the men who toll by night and by day to ensure the safety and convenience of thoso using the lines. My wife has probably never met Mr. Wana maker, or Mr. 8aks, or Mr. Altman, or Mr. Vantlne, or Mr. Stern, or any ono of sev eral other very estimable and succesful business gentlemen. Her time and tonijor and happiness are affected by an ormy of "walkers" and salesmen and clerks and cash boys and "wrappers" and ilellvrry mon. If we travel afar, not the presidents or general managers are those to whom we look for safety and comfort, though they play their part, but to ticket sailers and gatcmen and conductors and brakemen and porters and telegraph operators and en gineers and firemen. Nay, more, wo do not forgot the men who toll in perpetual night In the bowels of the earth for coal and Iron, or who work at the steel furnaces or In the huge foundries, who walk tho track by night and by day. In storm and in sunshine, or whose glad hammers ring trus on tho wheels at tho end of each division as we master time and space with ste im and steel. The same principle holds true In every form of civil life, and underlies every or ganized human endeavor. The mnyor may be of most signal ability and of character beyond reproach, but negligent or Incompe tent or dishonest subordinates put the city and its people on the rack. Great leaders In the state and in the nation can succeed only when they have an Intelligent follow ing. The eloquence of the pulpit avai!s little unless the result bo a myriad of earnest and self-sacrificing lives. In every undertaking. In all modern life, the de mand is ever the same for the people, for the v.'hole peoplo and for an aroused and alert and Intelligent people. Common people They are not tropical plants. Therefore, tropical climate did not exist In the Actio regions In the tertiary epoch. But the re mains prove that since then the climate must have undergone a minimum change of 28 degrees a positively enormous altera tion. And then there were found the remains of tertiary forests of magnolias, chestnuts, oaks and grapevines in Greenland under the seventieth parallel of latitude. That Is the kind of vegetation to be found now at Montrlex on Lake Geneva. These proofs complete the case. It is possible that a tropically warm ocean washed the North Pole In Silurian times. It is certain that a plant llfo that was possibly tropical flourished there In the coal or carbonl'.erous period. It Is absolutely certain that a climate like the climate of the United States and Europe today obtained there In tertiary times, whose last chapter probably was experienced by man. And that changes the history of the ani mal world of the Polar regions totally for us. The Polar animals of today evidently are "recent" products of adaptation that de veloped under new conditions. An alto gether different form of creatures may have preceded them. We cannot Imagine snow-colored Polar bears and thickly-furred musk oxen under the green magnolias of tertiary Greenland. Scientific speculation produces a wonder ful picture; it shows the Fram laboriously drifting In the grasp of vast Ice fields until even Nansen's heroism failed before the terrors of the Polar world, and we see another period when In that same latitude wandering herds of elephants, camels and wild horses browsed on green meadows. Or did that land l.Ue upeciea of mam mals of a kind quite different from any other known in the world species whose bones may be found some day In Franz Joseph Land, or a similar place, by an expedition that will lay more weight on and relations. They will not let him think. They interfere with the growth of his mental processes. They turn him away from his lofty cogitations by their im pertinent and trivial endearments. They warp his nature from lta solemn bent. They kill his mind. Let him grow and meditate. He has tho floor. Give him the opportunity to develop himself. "Don't talk baby talk," says Dr. Car penter. Certainly not. Why should a baby understand broken, any better than whole, English? Why will mothers use that strange nursery Chinook. "Did um ahakura dady?" and so on? The roan'a vocabulary Is shrunken on account of this habit. His bump of language la flattened. Long words for little ones; that's the talk. "John Henry, my valued progeny, I shall dis course to you for a few momenta on the ubject of the 'ConaervaUon of Energy.' they may be, perhaps but they must be un common common people. We in this new world have committed ourselves to this theory and have accepted this condition. Our success as a nation ap proved the wisdom of our course. We need and desire the greatest possible develop ment of the capacity and power of every citizen. The best results can be secured .only through universal effective energy. Leadership Is necessary and Is always with us. Thero will be no lack of captains of Industry, of masters of commerce, of gen erals who will plan our campaigns. The mountain tops are to remain, but we pro pose to level up. We have won In the race by the sanity and strength and efficiency of the whole people and we are to keep at the front by recognizing this fact. But only an Intelligent people can be self respecting, energetic, hopeful and effective. This Is why we tho pooplo have created a system of free public education of theAvhol people, for the peoplo. Not the Information, the facts, the formulae of the schools and the possible valuo of these to the Individual pupil He at the foundation of this system, but the need of sound training to open the, door of opportunity to all men, to give to all men self-reliance and to secure for all men greater equality In right of way. We need the best In every man and this sya tcm helps us to get at this. We need the likeliest In American society and we need It at the top, and this system brings It to the top, and with us it Is still true that the likeliest is generally found in the unllkellest pots. We stand for the American publla school, becauso In this very way it la ren dering a large public service. This Is why we rejoice, as the recurring "commence ments" and educational fete days remind ua of the close of another school year. We re Juice becauso In the American public, achool we have found "the longest lever with which human hands have ever pried." Pole paleontology than on geographical explora . Uon? The tremendous glaciers that slipped down over the world In the mysterious Ice porlod must have desolated the Arctic lands entirely. The beasts that live there now, onco lived In our Europe and our America. The continents are full of the remains of musk oxen, mammoths, reindeer, lemings and white hares. It remains possible that those creature originated In the north. The Increasing, numbing cold may have driven them south ward graduully. But it is conceivable, too, that the cold advanced too rapidly In the high north to permit the animals to go through the Blow process of adaptation. In that case mammoth and musk ox must have developed In European, American and Asiatic lands In comparatively low lati tudes at the time when the Ice began to creep down there. Only palcontological Investigation In the Polar lands can Bolve these questions. We must find out first whether or not the mammoth existed there before the ice appeared, or whether it was missing al together around the pole originally. After the glacial period or, rather, In the various times after the various glacial periods the mammoth and tho Polar ani mals that live today emigrated back to the north. They had accustomed themselves to cold climatic conditions, and sought the cold In the north as the Ice receded from the continents. It was at such tlmea that the mammoths mude their way to the Si berian seas and the musk oxen to Grlnnell Land. That migration from north to sooth and back again was witnessed by man. There is good proof of the fact that even In historical times northeastern Germany used to be visited by wandering herds of rein deer. A typically northern beast like the wolverine has been aeen In the heart of the European continent. Man, aa a hunter, helped to drive to the pole everything that could potislbly live there. WILHELM nOELSCIL "Marthy Ann, let me dissuade yon from your fruitless conation to Ingurgitate your rattle. The Impenetrability of matter la one of the earliest subjects which should enguge your attention." One should avoid 'telling young chil dren audi exciting stories as "Jack the Giant Killer." Explain, If you choose, that It la absurd to suppose that Jack or anybody else would kill giants. Giants get large salaries. They are too valuaUe to kill. Don't tell stories of any kind. Head the Gozetfer to baby. It will calm I.U nervous system and give him much statis tical and geographical Information. Now York Bun. Globe Glrdlers. Dr. Adolphus Keckler of Cincinnati Is about to start on his fifty-ninth tour around the world. Ua la a student of ethnology.