There is one thing the American people have got to learn, and that is to
give scholars in schools a half holiday when there is a circus in town.
We know that we are in advance of many of the prominent educators of the
country when we advocate such a policy, but sooner or later the people
whose duty it is to superintend schools will learn that we are right,
and they will have to catch up with us or resign.
In the first place, a boy is going to attend a circus, if there is one
in town, and the question before teachers and superintendents should
be, not how to prevent him from going to the circus, but how to keep
his mind on his books the day before the circus and the day after.
There have been several million boys made into liars by school officials
attempting to prevent their going to circuses, and we contend that it is
the duty of teachers to place as few temptations to lie as possible in
the way of boys.
If a boy knows that there will be no school on the afternoon of circus
day, he will study like a whitehead all the forenoon, and learn twice as
much as he will in all day if he can't go. If he knows that there is a
conspiracy on foot between his parents and the teachers to keep him from
the circus, he begins to think of some lie to get out of school. He will
be sick, or run away, or something.
He will get there, if possible. And after the first lie succeeds in
getting him out of school, he is a liar from the word go. There is
something, some sort of electricity that runs from a boy to a circus,
and all the teachers in the world cannot break the connection. A circus
is the boys' heaven.
You may talk to him about the beautiful gates ajar, and the angel
band in heaven that plays around the great white throne, and he can't
understand it, but the least hint about the circus tent, with the flap
pulled to one side to get in, and the band wagon, and the girls jumping
through hoops, and the clown, and he is onto your racket at a jump.
You may try to paralyze him by the story of Daniel in the den of lions,
and how he was saved by his faith in a power above, and the boy's mind
will revert to the circus, where a man in tights and spangles goes in
and bosses the lions and tigers around, and he will wonder if Daniel had
a rawhide, and backed out of the cage with his eye on the boss lion.
At a certain age a circus can hold over heaven or anything else, in a
boy's mind, and as long as the circus does not hurt him, why not shut
up shop a half a day and let him go? If you keep him in school he won't
learn anything, and he will go to the circus in the evening, and be up
half the night seeing the canvas men tear down the tent and load up, and
the next day he is all played out and not worth a continental. To some
it would look foolish to dismiss school for a circus, but it will cement
a friendship between teachers and scholars that nothing else could.
Suppose, a day or two before a circus arrives, the teacher should say to
the school: “Now I want you kids to go through your studies like a tramp
through a boiled dinner, and when the circus comes we will close up this
ranch and all go the circus, and if any of you can't raise the money to
go, leave your names on my desk and I will see you inside the tent if I
have to pawn my shirt.”
Of course it is a male teacher we are supposing said this. Well, don't
you suppose those boys and girls would study? They would fairly whoop it
up. And then suppose the teacher found forty boys that hadn't any money
to go, and he had no school funds to be used for such a purpose.
How long would it take him to collect the money by going around among
business men who had been boys themselves? He would go into a store and
say he was trying to raise money to take some of the poor children to
the circus, and a dozen hands would go down into a dozen pockets in two
jerks of a continued story, and they would all chip in.
O, we are too smart. We are trying to fire education into boys with a
shotgun, when we ought to get it into them inside of sugar coated pills.
Let us turn over a new leaf now, and show these boys that we have got
souls in us, and that we want them to have a good time if we don't lay
up a cent.