This condition of things ought not to be displeasing to us, for the reason that, in the main, we have ourselves brought it to pass. The children, during their first days at school, are loyally ready to force the views of their fathers and their mothers, and their uncles and aunts, upon their teachers; and their teachers are tactfully ready to effect a compromise with them. But, before very long, our reiterated, "Your teacher knows; do as she says," has its effect. The teacher becomes the child's touchstone in relation to a considerable number of the "array of subjects" taught in a present-day school. School-teachers in America prepare themselves so carefully for their duties, train themselves to such a high order of skill in their performance, it is but just that those of us who are not teachers should abdicate in their favor.
However, since we are all very apt to be in entire accord with the children's teachers in all really vital matters, our position of second place in the minds of the boys and girls with regard to the ways of doing "bank discount" or translating "_Gallia est omnes divisa in partes tres_" is of small account. At least, we have a fuller knowledge of their own relations with these mathematical and Latinic things than our grandparents had of our parents' lessons. And the children's teachers know more about our relations to the subjects taught than the teachers of our fathers and mothers knew respecting the attitudes of our grandfathers and grandmothers toward the curriculum of that earlier time. For the children of to-day, unlike the children of a former time, talk at home about school and talk at school about home. Almost unconsciously, this effects an increasingly cooperative union between home and school.
"We are learning 'Paul Revere's Ride,' in school," I heard a small girl who lives in Boston say recently to her mother.
"Are you, darling?" the mother replied. "Then, shouldn't you like to go some Saturday and see the church where the lanterns were hung?"
So much did the child think she would like to go that her mother took her the next Saturday.
"You saw the very steeple at which Paul Revere looked that night for the lanterns!" I said, when, somewhat later, I happened to be again at that child's home.