The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long
and complicated "rules" in grammar and mathematics, but had
little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to their
everyday affairs of their life. One subject which they liked to
talk about, and tell me that they had mastered, in arithmetic,
was "banking and discount," but I soon found out that neither
they nor almost any one in the neighbourhood in which they had
lived had ever had a bank account. In registering the names of
the students, I found that almost every one of them had one or
more middle initials. When I asked what the "J" stood for, in the
name of John J. Jones, it was explained to me that this was a
part of his "entitles." Most of the students wanted to get an
education because they thought it would enable them to earn more
money as school-teachers.
Notwithstanding what I have said about them in these respects, I
have never seen a more earnest and willing company of young men
and women than these students were. They were all willing to
learn the right thing as soon as it was shown them what was
right. I was determined to start them off on a solid and thorough
foundation, so far as their books were concerned. I soon learned
that most of them had the merest smattering of the high-sounding
things that they had studied.
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