Part 14 (1/2)

”An' I say,” interposed Con Bonner, ”that we can rest our case right here.

If that ain't the limit, I don't know what is!”

”Well,” said Jennie, ”do you desire to rest your case right here?”

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 a.s.sert,” 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 ma.s.s 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.

”And, Mr. Irwin,” she went on, ”will you have the school records, so we may be able to ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?”

”I will,” said Jim.

”Then,” said Jennie, ”we'll adjourn until nine o'clock. I hope to see every one here. We'll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr. Irwin, please remember that you state that you'll stand or fall on the mastery by these pupils of the text-books they are supposed to have neglected.”

”Not the mastery of the text,” said Jim. ”But their ability to do the work the text is supposed to fit them for.”

”Well,” said Jennie, ”I don't know but that's fair.”

”But,” said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, ”we don't want our children brought up to be yust farmers. Suppose we move to town--where does the culture come in?”

The Chicago papers had a news item which covered the result of the examinations; but the great sensation of the Woodruff District lay in the Sunday feature carried by one of them.

It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of Jennie Woodruff--the latter authentic, and the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently the portrait of a lumber-jack. There was also a very free treatment by the cartoonist of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the intention of shooting up the school board in case the decision went against the schoolmaster.

”When it became known,” said the news story, ”that the schoolmaster had bet his job on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed and alleged to have been studiously neglected, the excitement rose to fever heat. Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds being eight to five on General Proficiency against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and his school. And the way those rural kids rose in their might and ate up the text-books was simply scandalous. There was a good deal of nervousness on the part of some of the small starters, and some bursts of tears at excusable failures. But when the fight was over, and the dead and wounded cared for, the school board and the county superintendent were forced to admit that they wished the average school could do as well under a similar test.