BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
ON EDUCATION

BY
WILLIAM SUDDARDS FRANKLIN

SOUTH BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA
FRANKLIN, MACNUTT AND CHARLES
PUBLISHERS OF EDUCATIONAL BOOKS
1913

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1913

By William S. Franklin

PRESS OF

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY

LANCASTER, PA.

Dedicated

to a University

supported and controlled

by the people of

Pennsylvania.

The time will come when men will think of nothing but education. Nietzsche.

To face page iv

Since the first of August, 1914, this prophecy of Nietzsche's has shaped itself in the author's mind in an altered tense and in an altered mood.—The time HAS come when men MUST think of nothing but education; by education the author does not mean inconsequential bookishness, and neither did Nietzsche!

PREFACE.

The greater part and first essay, entitled Bill's School and Mine, was written in 1903, but the title and some of the material were borrowed from my friend and college mate William Allen White in 1912, when the essay was printed in the South Bethlehem Globe to stimulate interest in a local Playground Movement.

The second essay, The Study of Science, is taken from Franklin and MacNutt's Elements of Mechanics, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1908. I have no illusions concerning the mathematical sciences, for it is to such that the essay chiefly relates. Unquestionably the most important function of education is to develop personality and character; but science is impersonal, and an essay which attempts to set forth the meaning of science study must make an unusual demand upon the reader. Some things in this world are to be understood by sympathy, and some things are to be understood by serious and painful effort.

The third essay, Part of an Education, was privately printed in 1903 under the title A Tramp Trip in the Rockies, and it is introduced here to illustrate a phase of real education which is in danger of becoming obsolete. The school of hardship is not for those who love luxury, and to the poverty stricken it is not a school--it is a Juggernaut.

The five minor essays are mere splashes, as it were; but in each I have said everything that need be said, except perhaps in the matter of exhortation.

For the illustrations I am under obligations to my cousin Mr. Daniel Garber of Philadelphia.

WILLIAM SUDDARDS FRANKLIN

South Bethlehem Pa.,

October 22, 1913.

To face page vi

SUPPLEMENT TO PREFACE.

Your attention is called especially to the five short essays, or splashes, on pages 25, 29, 58, 91 and 95; each of these short essays fills about a page, and if you read them you will understand why the Independent has called this little book A Package of Dynamite.

The first essay, entitled Bill's School and Mine, is easy reading, and if one is not irredeemably literal in one's mode of thinking, it is very pleasant reading. The tall talk which is sprinkled throughout this essay and which reaches a climax on pages 19 and 20  is not intended to be actually fatal in its seemingly murderous quality! Many contented city people in reading this essay should be prompted after the manner of a cow-boy who in a spell of seemingly careless gun play says to his sophisticated friend "Smile, D—— You, Smile".

The essay on The Study of Science, is somewhat of a "sticker", and if any particular reader does not like it he can let it alone, but there is an increasing number of young men in this world who must study science whether they like it or not. Indeed the object of this particular essay is to explain this remarkable and in some respects distressing fact. The essay relates primarily to the physical sciences, narrowly speaking, because the author's teaching experience has been wholly in physics and chemistry. One can get a fairly good idea of the author's point of view by reading the portions of the essay which stand in large print, but it is quite necessary to read the small print with more or less painful care if one is to get any fundamental idea of the matter under consideration. The reader will please consider thoughtfully the close juxtaposition of this essay and the following short essay on The Discipline of Work.

The third essay, Part of an Education, is the story of a tramp trip through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, and it is an introduction to the little essay on The Uses of Hardship. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS.