NEWSPAPERS IN SCHOOLS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 1019, 27 April 1869, Page 2

NEWSPAPERS IN SCHOOLS

The Americans are ed ucational reformers, after the heart of the late Mr Cobden and Mr Robert Lowe. The elder statesman’s doctrine, that a single copy of The Times contained for the modern Englishman more instruction than the whole of Thucydides, has been quoted to satiety, not to say nausea. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer has often said in substance the same thing, garnishing his attacks on classical education with quotations from the classics, in scorn of the humane precept which forbids the seething of the kid in its mother’s milk. But whatever the zeal of Americanising politicians in England, America outstrips them. They reach the place where she stood yesterday, and already she is leagues ahead. While value of newspapers to men is the subject of discussion here, America has found out their importance to children. A paragraph in a contemporary states that the authorities of Pennsylvania, with a view of training the youthful mind of that State to a comprehension of their time and country, and. to the duties of citizenship, have determined to make newspapers the reading-books in their schools. The pure style, the gentle humanities, and the ethical tone of the New Yoik Herald and its fellows are to be the food of the Transatlantic youth. They are to be nourished on “screamers.” Possibly, if the newspapers do no good to the children, the children may do some good to the newspapers. The profound reverence which the Roman satirist says is due to boyhood may have a chastening effect upon the editorial mind, and may restrain the exuberance of Billingsgate. Newspapers in one syllable for infants of tender years, and journals of increasing difficulty for each higher form, will possibly come into existence. Children in petticoats will lisp the names of Grant and

Seymour, and lads in knickerbockers wil* discuss in more articulate language the claims of President and of Congress. The author of this noble project ought not to let his name sink into oblivion. The philosopher who would have banished poets from his republic is as nothing to the sage who would introduce newspapers into the school-house. Plato and Roasseau, Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, Bell and Lancaster, Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Thomas Day, sink into insignificance as educational reformers compared with the great American unknown. The fate of the author of “ Sandford and Merton” may, however, serve as a warning to educational innovators. That worthy man as is well known, educated each of two young ladies as bis future wife, not with any bigamic intentions, but with the justifiable wish to leave himself a matrimonial alternative. The young ladies were quite ready to be married, but they made their own choice and it did not fall on Mr Day, who died from the kick of a horse which he was training on a new system. The American reformer may possibly find that his scheme of education by newspapers, by a similar retribution, will lead the subjects of the experiment to forswear newspapers and renounce politics for the term of their natural lives. Perhaps the project veils a subtle irony. Is it a satire on the American tendency to ignore the past, and emulating the French Revolutionists, to date everything from “ a year one,” beginning with the Declaration of Independence ? Does its author mean to insinuate that to many persons in the United States, history, philosophy, poetry, and art are sealed books, and that they know no other literature than the newspaper ? If so, the satiric touch is exceedingly neat and delicate. — Daily News.