The 'Veneer and Sham' of 19th Century Schooling

When a man of sense prepares to take a journey he does not fill his trunk with a little shabby linen and a great many cheap scarf-pins and sleasy embroidered slippers. On the contrary, he packs in reasonable compass a goodly number of serviceable garments in excellent repair, and goes forth neat, wholesome, and of an equal mind, appropriately fitted for his journey and his work. This man goes on his journey and his children stay behind, for the famous public school of their ward or district demands their presence, and the absent father’s orders are strict; they must be prepared for the greater journey of life and its business. Week after week their young heads are stuffed with a little information on a great number of subjects—astronomy, physiology, drawing, vocal music, German, natural philosophy, grammar, etymology—in short, plenty of cheap scarf-pins and slippers. The sturdy, every-day needs of serviceable arithmetic (not glib memorized sets of figures), of accurate and brightly intelligent reading, of easy writing and correct speech, fare badly among such a host of studies. They are brushed over hastily and by rote, like all the others, and shabby enough they are as they are packed away among the scarf-pins for that long and busy journey. The precise and intimate knowledge of common branches without which no man can be decently equipped for work of any sort, is discarded for what Mr. Charles Francis Adams aptly calls 'veneer and sham.' The experiment of 'smatter' has been sufficiently tried in the American public schools. It is a sort of decorative art of which we have had a great deal too much. There is in most of our cities a vast school expenditure to little purpose. While the Tribune has no mind to preach economy in this direction, it has a reasonable desire to see all this money used with common sense and honest discretion.