System Not Perfect
Not many of us feel that the present school system is perfect. We are all wiling to experiment with the hope of improving. The question of winter is a most interesting one, for it is so complicated and so involved with other factors of child welfare. I imagine the first argument against school in summer would be "It's too hot for the children to study," but that might be open to argument. Children as a rule are not as sensitive to heat as older people; that is they are not conscious of it making them uncomfortable. For that reason they often overdo in hot weather and exhaust themselves at active play, unless restrained. The lessons and the routine of school might protect them from that danger.
But a more vital argument against summer school occurs to me; whether it is valid or not I leave to you. It is is that the school would interfere with a very important part of a country child's education; that is, contact with the farm work. A vacation in the winter would give the children delightful chances for outdoor play and exercise, even in bad weather, for moderately rugged children can stand much bad weather if they are properly clothed. But the farm activities are not so varied nor so interesting during the winter; and isn't it decidedly worth while for the child to get a goodly proportion of his "education" from practical contact with the affairs of life? The modern tendency is more and more toward just that practical point of view. Children are taught less by rules and printed directions and more by actually doing.
In some advanced schools, the children even learn how to figure wallpaper problems by actually papering small play-houses, which have previously been constructed by children who were working other arithmetical problems in this practical way. Such problems are artificial and may easily be overdone, but the country child's summer life is not artificial, and from it he learns many valuable conceptions of life. I imagine most country boys at least, would make a great outcry if they had to miss hay-making, threshing, silo-filling, and all the miscellaneous adventures of boyhood associated with them. --Hope.
Memory Gem
I live for those who love me,
Whose hearts are kind and true;
For the heaven that smiles above me.
And awaits my spirit, too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the task by God assigned me,
For the hopes not left behind me
And for the good that I can do.-- Banks
Memory Gem
"Suppose that this vessel," said the skipper with a a groan,
"Should lose her bearing, run away, and bump upon a stone.
"Suppose she'd shiver and go down, and save ourselves we couldn't.".
The mate replied, "Oh, blow me eyes, suppose again she shouldn't."-- Selected