DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Horizons, v. 5, issue 3, whole no. 19, June 1944

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Horizons, v. 5, issue 3, whole no. 19, June 1944

Page 9

This Article is Less Than I Might Have Been

   Six months or so ago, during the days before Francis T. Laney moved to Los Angeles and thus became subject to the fan paralysis that attacks all who emigrate to that otherwise blameless city, he and I had plans of doing our views on education up brown. We had discovered that neither of us had much respect for the present system of schools and teaching, but that our ideas of what to do about the problem varied almost as much from one another as from the commonly accepted faith in public school curriculums and college football educations. Our plan was to write, each of us an article describing our idea of the ideal set-up for teaching the youth of this country, then submit these plans to one another, and write lengthy rebuttals of the other's proposals, after which we'd publish the whole shebang through the FAPA, and invite additional discussion and criticism.
   Unfortunately, it never came to pass. I was too busy to write me share at the time, and the FTLaniac was preparing to move. Since he is in LA, I'm quite positive that he doesn't care to co up the project as originally planned, so I'm sketching here some of my beliefs and proposals, in the hope that the rest of you will tell me what is wrong with them, and whether I have something practical in my basic assumptions.
   Just now I believe, there is great excitement and disagreement in educational circles over whether a child should learn things empirically or in the accepted manner of statements by the teacher that such and such is so: all of which seems rather analogous to the learned men of a few hundred years ago who debated on the exact number of angels that could hold a ballet on the point of a pin, instead of considering the basic question of whether there are angels. In other words, the matter of whether a child hall be encouraged to deduce facts for himself by reasoning and research, or told by the teacher, is quite beside the main points.
   Those points, I'd say, are simply these: that the whole educational setup is quite the opposite of practicality, in the sense that the child is taught academic subjects when young--fro the time he is six or seven years old--and the practical arts by which he will probably earn his living when he finishes school are deferred until he is near or in his teens, and for the first time mentally equipped to learn the trivium and quadrivium that teachers have been trying to drill into him all through grammar school.
   By this, I certainly don't mean that a boy or girl should learn to operate drill presses, fly airplanes, and breed new varieties of roses up to the age of adolescence, then be taught for the first time that the earth is round or that two and two makes four. The manual and academic learnings must go hand in hand at all times, but there is little sense in continuing the present time-wasting methods, with its attendant repressing of the energies of small children whose greatest joy in life is doing things with the hands.
   To outline my ideal schooling program very roughly, and subject to alterations without further notice, I'd begin by shortening the school day to two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, omitting the recess which always requires at least an hour to recover from, for children in the first five grades. Of the twenty hours in the school week, between twelve and fifteen would be devoted to "things to do": tasks which a small child is capable of accomplishing that will remain useful to him throughout his life. Specifically, during these first five years he should learn how to operate a typewriter, conjointly with instruction in reading and penmanship. He should learn how to saw a board and drive a nail correctly, and by the time he is in the fifth grade, should be capable of building any reasonably difficult item from plans and diagrams, given the proper tools and equipment. He should certainly learn how to cook--and naturally, the girls would spend about twice as much time on the culinary arts as on carpentry, and the boys would have it just the other way around. He should learn the proper methods of oiling machinery, planting a garden, even--carefully supervised!--driving a car, in trainer autos cut down to the right size.
   In short, the first years of schooling would concentrate on manual arts that

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This Article is Less Than I Might Have Been Six months or so ago, during the days before Francis T. Laney moved to Los Angeles and thus became subject to the fan paralysis that attacks all who emigrate to that otherwise blameless city, he and I had plans of doing our views on education up brown. We had discovered that neither of us had much respect for the present system of schools and teaching, but that our ideas of what to do about the problem varied almost as much from one another as from the commonly accepted faith in public school curriculums and college football educations. Our plan was to write, each of us an article describing our idea of the ideal set-up for teaching the youth of this country, then submit these plans to one another, and write lengthy rebuttals of the other's proposals, after which we'd publish the whole shebang through the FAPA, and invite additional discussion and criticism. Unfortunately, it never came to pass. I was too busy to write me share at the time, and the FTLaniac was preparing to move. Since he is in LA, I'm quite positive that he doesn't care to co up the project as originally planned, so I'm sketching here some of my beliefs and proposals, in the hope that the rest of you will tell me what is wrong with them, and whether I have something practical in my basic assumptions. Just now I believe, there is great excitement and disagreement in educational circles over whether a child should learn things empirically or in the accepted manner of statements by the teacher that such and such is so: all of which seems rather analogous to the learned men of a few hundred years ago who debated on the exact number of angels that could hold a ballet on the point of a pin, instead of considering the basic question of whether there are angels. In other words, the matter of whether a child hall be encouraged to deduce facts for himself by reasoning and research, or told by the teacher, is quite beside the main points. Those points, I'd say, are simply these: that the whole educational setup is quite the opposite of practicality, in the sense that the child is taught academic subjects when young--fro the time he is six or seven years old--and the practical arts by which he will probably earn his living when he finishes school are deferred until he is near or in his teens, and for the first time mentally equipped to learn the trivium and quadrivium that teachers have been trying to drill into him all through grammar school. By this, I certainly don't mean that a boy or girl should learn to operate drill presses, fly airplanes, and breed new varieties of roses up to the age of adolescence, then be taught for the first time that the earth is round or that two and two makes four. The manual and academic learnings must go hand in hand at all times, but there is little sense in continuing the present time-wasting methods, with its attendant repressing of the energies of small children whose greatest joy in life is doing things with the hands. To outline my ideal schooling program very roughly, and subject to alterations without further notice, I'd begin by shortening the school day to two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, omitting the recess which always requires at least an hour to recover from, for children in the first five grades. Of the twenty hours in the school week, between twelve and fifteen would be devoted to "things to do": tasks which a small child is capable of accomplishing that will remain useful to him throughout his life. Specifically, during these first five years he should learn how to operate a typewriter, conjointly with instruction in reading and penmanship. He should learn how to saw a board and drive a nail correctly, and by the time he is in the fifth grade, should be capable of building any reasonably difficult item from plans and diagrams, given the proper tools and equipment. He should certainly learn how to cook--and naturally, the girls would spend about twice as much time on the culinary arts as on carpentry, and the boys would have it just the other way around. He should learn the proper methods of oiling machinery, planting a garden, even--carefully supervised!--driving a car, in trainer autos cut down to the right size. In short, the first years of schooling would concentrate on manual arts that