MICHIGAN ACADEMY OP SCIENCE. 161 



OUR SCHOOL MUSEUM. 



HON. CHARLES W. GARFIELD. 



Picture to yourself a lad of seventeen in charge of a country school 

 of 81 pupils, the school-house having a seating capacity of only 68, two 

 upon a seat. It was in the old days when there was little arrangement 

 of the course of study. Thei'e was absolutely nothing done in the way of 

 grading ; there were 38 recitations in a day, covering all the ground from 

 the A, B, C little ones to a class in quadratics in algebra. In those days 

 there were two terms, the winter term and the summer term. This pho- 

 tograph is taken in the summer term, about two weeks after it had 

 been opened. The compensation of the teacher was |30.00 a month. 

 This was to be used as a fund to help through college, so, notwithstanding 

 all of the untoward conditions, hope was high, for the net earnings meant 

 a wider opportunity for education. 



At nearly the end of the first fortnight there was a languishing period, 

 the nerves of the teacher and children had been overwrought, the temper- 

 ature inside and out was too high for comfort. The teacher was at his 

 wits' end what to do with this lot of uneasy children. It was three 

 o'clock in the afternoon when the strain was very near the snapping 

 point, the teacher stopped short in his work and asked that all books be 

 put away, and he said to the wondering children: "We are all hot and 

 tired and nervous, and I am certain we shall not accomplish very much 

 in this last hour, so I have concluded to have a little talk with you, and 

 if you agree with me we will plan something that will give us all a good 

 time. You are sent here to school and I am hired by this district, having 

 in view the acquirement of knowledge which we are expected to get out 

 of our text books. We must not disappoint our parents in this regard. 

 We must do our level best to satisfy their ideas of what we ought to 

 learn; if we can do this, however, and have a real good time, I do not 

 think anybody will find any fault with us, and I have a plan that it 

 would take all of us to carry out, and I want you to take hold of it with 

 me, and if my thought is well carried out, this term of school will be one 

 that you will always remember. I find that we do not any of us know 

 very much about the things in our own neighborhood. We are studying 

 the geography of the world and we are spending a great deal of time on 

 arithmetic and algebra and natural philosophy, but I want each one of 

 us should learn all we can during this term about the things we can see 

 in our own school district, and in order to have something to show for 

 the knowledge that we will thus acquire, I propose that we form a 

 museum and that we begin tomorrow; that now, at the close of school, 

 you go out from here with your eyes open to find something that is curious 

 that you would like to know more about and bring it in tomorrow morn- 

 ing, and with the things that we will thus have together, if our lessons 

 are perfectly learned by three o'clock tomorrow, we will spend the last 

 hour of school in talking about- the things that are brought in to start 

 our museum. I will have a case of shelves made and we will try and 

 classify the things as they are brought in, and you shall each one of you 

 21 



