POST MORTEM IN A SCHOOL

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 46, 16 June 1914, Page 2

POST MORTEM IN A SCHOOL

Ninety ratepayers of Mixonden, near Halifax, Novia Scotia, have signed a petition protesting against too much originality in the methods at the village school, alleging that the methods were "extreme," and did not equip the children for the every-day work and life of the district. The master of the school claims that the atmosphere of it is freedom. The school grows vegetables on the moor, keeps poultry in a henhouse built by the boys, constructs pigeon-pens, prepares poultry'for table, drains fields, digs in sandpits, makes seaside buckets out of large old ones, cricket bats out of old school desks, and bags for the girls out of string. AH the books used in the school have been bound by the <?!;-«- dren, who run a little theatre, paint the scenery and write the plays. The children sketch the neighboring landscapes, and have constituted wheelbarrows and a grindstone. One day. Bays the headmaster, a lieu died, and he conducted a post mortem before the scholars, diagnosing appendicitis on the part of the hen, and drawing the moral of "the need for person,al cleanliness and the proper mastication of food." Already the cinematograph is in use at Mixenden school, where the necessary darkness is obtained by the ingenious but simple niethod of inking the blinds. And it is claimed that self-reliance, with full play for individuality, is the key-note of the methods to which the ninety parents and ratepayers take exception. But originality is often a dangerous quality for a teacher to display.