Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.
“Now, Mr. Irwin,” said she, “while you have been following out these very interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of teaching the things called for by the course of study?”
“What is the course of study?” queried Jim. “Is it anything more than an outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading: why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of language than by writing about things they have found out in relation to some of the sciences which are laid under contribution by farming? Everything they do runs into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than the course requires. There isn’t any branch of study—not even poetry and art and music—that isn’t touched by life. If there is we haven’t time for it in the common schools. We work out from life to everything in the course of study.”
“Do you mean to assert,” queried Jennie, “that while you have been doing all this work which was never contemplated by those who have made up the course of study, that you haven’t neglected anything?”
“I mean,” said Jim, “that I’m willing to stand or fall on an examination of these children in the very text-books we are accused of neglecting.”
Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full minute, and at the clock. It was nearly time for adjournment.
“How many pupils of the Woodruff school are here?” she asked. “All rise, please!”
A mass of the audience, in the midst of which sat Jennie’s father, rose at the request.
“Why,” said Jennie, “I should say we had a quorum, anyhow! How many will come back to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, and bring your school-books? Please lift hands.”
Nearly every hand went up.