Ninth Glimmer: Training for Democracy
The light bums brightly over a modern schoolroom. The pupils are seated in chairs or at movable desks, well grouped. Miss White, the teacher, is seated near her desk, or table, which is neatly arranged and is brightened by some flowers. She is dressed in a pretty, serviceable frock, with white collar and cuffs. She wears well-fitted, medium-heeled shoes. Her hair is neatly and becomingly coiled. All her movements are graceful but thoroughly alive. Her voice is pleasing and her articulation is perfect. In dress, voice, and movements, the pupils reflect the teacher’s influence.
An elderly gentleman is visiting the school. When the curtain is raised, he is standing beside a chair near the teacher and is speaking to seven boys and girls standing in line. He holds a paper containing a list of words in his hand.
Visitor. I congratulate you, young people. The list of words I gave you in the spelling-match just ended, is the very list that was given over a hundred years ago in a spelling-match held in the town hall of a New England village. Pupils from two district schools took part in the contest, and the hall was crowded with their friends and relatives. At the close of the match everybody was spelled down but one boy, Hiram Edwards, afterwards a famous preacher. At the end of our match to-day, we have seven girls and boys still standing. I congratulate you more once.
The pupils bow and return to their seats.
Visitor. Miss White, this is my first visit to a schoolroom in ten years. I am interested in the modern methods of education. May I ask you a few questions?
Miss White (who has risen to her feet on being addressed by her elderly visitor). Certainly. My pupils and I will gladly answer all the questions we can.
A questioning smile of the teacher’s is answered by assenting smiles from the pupils.
Visitor. What are the pupils doing in geography?
Miss White. Will someone answer our visitor?
Several pupils rise.
Miss White (choosing). Mary.
Mary (looking straight at Visitor). To-day we are to show whether or not Argentina is a progressive country.
Visitor. Aren’t you going to take just what your geography says? That’s what we did when I went to school.
Mary. Yes, but we want to know more than our geography tells before we can decide.
Visitor. Bless me! I don’t see how you’re going to get anywhere. Suppose half of you say Argentina isn’t a progressive country, and the other half say it is, and the geography says nothing—who is going to decide?
Mary. Oh, we must all prove our statements, show our authority. (Taking up a book and looking around.) See, we all have reference books. (Other pupils produce books which they hold up.) They are all different.
Visitor (walking over and peering at titles through glasses). Different! So they are—as different as our way of studying geography from one book in the past. Well! Well! What are you doing in arithmetic?
Again several pupils stand.
Visitor (choosing one). You tell me, young man.
Pupil. We are working problems in percentage. I am on page 201.
Visitor. And where are the others, pray?
Pupils stand and answer in turn at nod from visitor.
First Pupil. I am working on page 199.
Second Pupil. I am working on page 204.
Third Pupil. I am working on page 200.
Visitor. My! This is as bad as a district school! All working on different pages!
Miss White (to First Pupil). Tom, will you please tell our visitor how we study arithmetic?
Tom. Miss White explained what percentage is, that it is a sort of other name for decimal fractions, and the problems can be worked just like common or decimal fractions. Then we work them. That’s all. I’d have been farther, only I got stuck on the eighth problem on page 197. But I finally worked it all right. And now I am just sailing along.
Visitor. Good for you! Good for every one of you! I like the child or the man who solves his problems independently. I had an idea that nowadays teachers did the real work and pupils only copied it. That’s what I’ve been told.
Pupils look bewildered for a second, then, thinking this an attempt at a joke, laugh.
Visitor. When I was a boy, we used to speak pieces on Friday afternoons. I liked best to recite bits of patriotic speeches. Do any of you know Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address? (Most of the class stand.) Bless me! So many!
Miss White. If you would like to hear one of my pupils recite it, choose your orator.
Visitor. I think I’d like to hear this little chap speak those great words of a great man.
George, the boy chosen, comes to the front of the room and recites.
ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL CEMETERY
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Visitor. Thank you, my lad, thank you.
Miss White. Sometimes we make original one-minute speeches. Would you like to hear one of those we prepared on Theodore Roosevelt? If so, choose your speaker.
Visitor. Indeed I would. I think I’ll choose you.
The pupil chosen comes to the front and delivers an original speech.
Visitor. Great work! Great work! I’m sure there is another Lincoln or Roosevelt in the making, right here in this class. I am especially pleased to hear these good American speeches, for I can see by your faces that some of you, or perhaps your parents, came from foreign lands.
Miss White. Those who were not born in America please stand. (Seven pupils stand.) In what country were you born?
In turn each answers: 1, Italy. 2, Russia. 3, Ireland. 4, Sweden. 5, Russia. 6, Austria. 7, England.
Miss White. Now, will all those whose parents—one or both—were born in other lands please stand also? (More than half the class rise. Motions pupils to their seats.) What are you all now?
Pupils (emphatically). Americans!
Miss White. I am sure our visitor will be pleased to hear, “I am an American,” recited by Alice and Peter. Then we will all recite The American Creed.
Alice and Peter come to the front of the room and recite.
Alice.
I am an American.
My father belongs to the Sons of the Revolution;
My mother, to the Colonial Dames.
One of my ancestors pitched tea overboard in Boston Harbor;
Another stood his ground with Warren;
Another hungered with Washington at Valley Forge.
My forefathers were America in the making:
They spoke in her council halls;
They commanded her ships;
They cleared her forest.
Dawns reddened and paled.
Stanch hearts of mine beat fast at each new star
In the nation’s flag.
Keen eyes of mine foresaw her greater glory:
The sweep of her seas,
The plenty of her plains.
The man-hives in her billion-wired cities.
Every drop of blood in me holds a heritage of Patriotism.
I am proud of my past.
I am an American.
Peter.
I am an American.
My father was an atom of dust,
My mother, a straw in the wind,
To his Serene Majesty.
One of my ancestors died in the mines of Siberia.
Another was crippled for life by twenty blows of the knout;
Another was killed defending his home during the massacres.
But then the dream came—
The dream of America.
In the light of the Liberty torch
The atom of dust became a man
And the straw in the wind became a woman
For the first time.
“See,” said my father, pointing to the flag that fluttered near,
“That flag of stars and stripes is yours;
It is the emblem of the promised land.
It means, my son, the hope of humanity.
Live for it—die for it!”
Under the open sky of my new country I swore to do so;
And every drop of blood in me will keep that vow.
I am proud of my future.
I am an American.
Miss White steps forward, and placing a hand on the shoulder of each, leads the class, as they stand proudly erect, in reciting The American Creed. The Creed must be spoken clearly and emphatically.
Class.
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.
Curtain
Education and Any City appear before the curtain.
Any City. Do you mean to tell me that all the sixth-grade pupils in America are being taught as are these children? If so, no sacrifice is too great for the public to make, that such schools may be maintained.
Education. Alas, no! I have shown you one of the best schools. But there are hundreds of such schools in the land to-day; and I tell you, no sacrifice is too great for the public to make that all schools in the country may be brought to this standard, may be advanced beyond it. It is owing to the self-denial and patriotism of the best teachers of America that the average standard of her schools is as high as it is to-day; it is because of their untiring efforts that America has to-day schools beyond the price the public is paying for them.
Any City (as if thinking aloud). Yes, such children—children with a thorough education; children trained to think and act for themselves; children who learn to stick to a thing until it is finished; children who are healthy, courteous, and patriotic—will be a power for good when they become men and women.
Education. Yes, it is to the school-children of to-day that you must look for the controllers of the future destinies of America. Upon the training you give them now depends the fate of the Nation in the years to come. We are at the dividing of the ways. The public must either provide the means for the democratic training of all boys and girls, or permit class-distinctions in citizens of a republic. That you may know the danger that thus threatens, come with me and behold a possible school of the future.
Exit Education and Any City.