The Centennial Call: Snohomish Citizens Urged to Claim Their History

Celebration at Snohomish.

Call attention to the late announcement of our bounty Commissioners for the 4th of July Celebration of the Centennial year. We fully endorse their recommendations, and suggest that a meeting be called by our citizens, say about the last Monday of this month, for the purpose of perfecting all necessary arrangements for a complete county celebration, and also local county interests as well as for presenting all facts of permanent value relating to our local history from the settlement of our county to this time.

If Seattle, or some other of the older and larger towns on the Sound, had shown at this position to try to represent our local history, and allow us a representative share in their celebration, we should, any way, forego a local home celebration, unite at some central point, and celebrate the history and development of the whole Sound country there. This point, some months since, was urged by our people; no attention has been paid to the matter. Now it certainly is best to celebrate all of our own interests at home. Who will take the lead? We will contribute our share.

We had the pleasure of visiting the district school of this place, last Monday, officially, and can truly say the term has commenced, under the care of Miss Johns as teacher, with very flattering prospects. The scholars are already under an excellent discipline, order being the law, kindly enforced and cheerfully obeyed. We regret the unfinished condition of the school room, the poor furniture and meager equipments. The Trustees, however, are doing all they can to remedy these defects, and as soon as the new desks, lately ordered, arrive, our pupils will be more comfortably accommodated than those of any other district in the county. This being the largest, richest and longest organized district of any, and having the greatest number of pupils, it should have the model school house and the model school. But, something else must be done, before we can establish such a claim.

Heretofore, the parents have been altogether too backward in visiting the school. If parents could only realize how much it lessens the care and trouble of teachers, for them to visit the school often, and how much the same stimulates and encourages the pupils, not a parent in the district would begrudge one hour or two every week spent in the school room. Parents, your duty is not done, when you have hurried all your little ones to the school room, at nine o'clock, and then rest easy and content, till four o'clock finds them trooping home again. You cannot delegate your care, authority and responsibility entirely to your salaried teacher. You should drop into the school unceremoniously and do it often. Watch the exercises. See the infinite labor, patience and fortitude requisite to control forty or fifty scholars, of all ages and every shade of disposition. How wearied and care worn our teachers become often in the course of one short term. You sympathize with your pastor in his labor for the good of all; you pity your physician going to the couch of pain in the stormy midnight hour. Can not you afford to divide a part of this with the ever-tasked guardian of your precious children? Encourage the little ones by your occasional presence in the room, where they meekly bend over the hard wooden desk. Try the hard benches you have provided for them, which often cramp and deform the mind and hardly ever fails to make every bone and muscle ache with pain. Make the school room cheerful, roomy, airy and elegant. Make it cheerful by your presence. Let them know you do not send them to school for the sake of getting rid of them, and this is best done by an occasional, informal visit; by a personal inquiry of how they are getting on. If something was done to remove the tediousness from study, the child would not, as they often do, so dread the school room; and if parents would bear a part of the heavy responsibility often unjustly thrust upon the teacher, instead of piling the burden still higher, the profession of teacher would not be the shortest lived of all the learned professions as is now the case. And this can be done, by parents taking a real not feigned interest in the scholar, teacher, the school room and all that pertains to it, and manifesting that interest by often repeated visits to the school. The public school in this place can be made more efficient than it has been, if parents will but visit the school now at the commencement of the term, they will see for themselves, just how far advanced each pupil is; and they cannot but regret, that with the many terms and teachers we have had the last three years, there has been so little advancements, so little thorough teaching. We do hope no one will look upon this article as a babbler's cranking. The evil exists. Parents have been apathetic. We shall not believe you, when you say you feel an interest unless you manifest, by visiting the school.