Outside of the visual and auditory library in the home, the second great new feature in Roadtown education will be the home work of the child’s parents. In work room and garden the child will learn what the world is for. About the most pitiable thing imaginable is a child whose parents do not believe in child labor. I do not mean the killing of children in mines and mills, but the child labor such as you see on the wholesome farm, where the child does his part along with the rest of the family.
The present system of keeping a child from all work until his body and mind are formed and then plunging him into industrial life is only exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child slavery system commonly known as “child labor.” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” but all school and play and no work makes Jack a jackass.
The Roadtown child will learn his parent’s occupation, and his uncle’s and aunt’s occupation, and his neighbor’s occupation, and will have more ability to take care of himself when he is ten years old than the present city-bred college man of twenty.
But the community as a whole has some claim on the child’s life and the child’s future as well as the parents—a fact that all intelligent parents will recognize. For this reason instruction outside the family is desirable and will be arranged by the Roadtown public school system.
The occupation of housekeeping having been eliminated, the kindergarten teaching force of Roadtown will be composed of women of mature minds, many of whom will have borne children and are therefore equipped with actual experience in caring for them.
With the entire population to select from more real or natural-born teachers will be found than under the present régime, where most married women are limited in occupation to family food manufacturer and household drudge.
Mothers for Public School Teachers.
To these instructors the children will go at hours as arranged for. One woman will take little tots into her home to amuse and care for them while their mothers are away or at work. Another will instruct the children in mathematics. The man skilled in botany will instruct groups of children in his garden, and the chemist and mineralogist in their laboratories. Instead of grade schools we will have child universities; instead of college degrees there will be citizenship examinations, with rewards of positions of trust in Roadtown management. Instead of college young folks and old fogy old folks there will be an industrial university and universal athletics and sports. The Roadtown school system will be the most versatile imaginable. It will develop the greatest geniuses the world has ever known and save the most money. Pounding literature into the head of a natural born mechanic is both economic and mental waste. The universal query in Roadtown will not be what does he know, but what can he do.
Physical education will be fully as much a matter of public concern in Roadtown as mental education. It ought to be, for disease is contagious, ignorance is not. The Roadtown child will play in the open country like farm boys. He will be brown and sturdy and fall out of trees and go swimming in the creek, but he will not be a wild animal, or a pet to be taken out and aired by the nurse—distinguishable from the poodle only by the absence of the chain.