Maple Grove (that's our little one room school out here at Sunrise) now has a parent teachers' association. We have only nine pupils in school, but we have 18 members signed up for the parent teachers' association at the organization meeting. The children and their teacher planned a delightful Halloween program and invited all the patrons of the school to attend, and in the friendly festive atmosphere of the occasion we organized our club. I can't help but feel that these little clubs centered in our little schools may do as much to solve the problem of educating our children and producing good citizens as any of the more expensive methods advocated by various well-meaning educators, and politicians.
A girl who used to attend Maplegrove, now grown with children of her own in the neighboring school, told us what their parent teachers' association had accomplished in its two years of existence. "Our teacher came to me two years ago she said, and told me that she was starting her third year in the district and had not seen more than half of the parents of her pupils. It startled me to think that so many of us send our children for eight or nine months of the year for most of their waking hours for eight years or more to a strange place and a strange teacher, and then wonder why we do not have more control over them."
Should Pull Together
Why shouldn't the parents and the teacher get together, be friends, understand each other, pull together, when there is nothing more important to any of us than the welfare of the children? And the interesting thing about it all was that when we got together, we began at once to notice the school needed things. It was not the sort of place we really wanted our children to grow up in. If we hadn't started the club and got together and actually visited the building, we might have gone on thinking that whatever was there was plenty enough, but when we actually saw conditions, and had our interest roused, we saw a number of places where we could improve matters and give our children more of what we wanted them to have. Our building is more than 100 years old, located in a beautiful section of timberland, in a region rich in historic lore. Why shouldn't that school be made to be as big and fine an influence in our children's lives as any million dollar alma mater with gymnasium and pipe organ further away from home? It will not need to raise the tax much either to make it so, for if we parents meet and play with the children and the teacher, keep the building fresh was painting in good repair, their memories of their school will be happy ones, and the influence we have on them will be strong and permanent.
Here is an article by an eastern woman, who is having unusual success in educating children by a system different from the "graded schools." Her ideas may not be acceptable to all of us, but at any rate they are refreshingly interesting and perhaps they will make some of us better satisfied with improving the schools we have instead of fretting because we can't have better. --Hope.
MEMORY GEM
The clothes line is a rosary
Of household help and care,
Each little saint the mother loves
Is represented there.
And when across the garden plot
She walks with thoughtful heed,
I should not wonder if she told
Each garment for a bead.
A stranger passing, I salute
The household in its wear,
And smile to think how near of kin
Are love and toil and prayer.
--Selected