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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 16, 1930)
The CHEM A WA AMERICAN Page 3 MR. LAV ATTA MAKES IMPRESSION (F rom the Q uiver H erbert S pencer ) of Men dress their children’s minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. People are beginning to see that the first requisite for success in life, is to be a good animal. »¡»a» 1 ■ >» Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others. Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to that which brings ap plause. > We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say thoughout his after career a boy, nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose. To prepare for complete living is the function which education has to discharge, and the only rational mode of judging of an educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such function. As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we shall be thought, is the question; so in education, the question is, not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so much as the intrinsic effects on others. Before there can be any rational curriculum, we must settle things it most concerns us to know, or to use a word of Bacon’s now unfortunately obsolete— we must determine the relative value of knowledge. As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevail ing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coertion of parents and teachers. IBM» -■■■■ >■ Do not expect from a child any great amount of moral goodness. During early years every civilized man passes thiough that phase of character exhibited by the barbarous race from which he is descended. There is no denying the fact that wherever he goes Mr. LaVatta, who a few weeks ago was a visitor at our school and who is well known to our people, makes a most favorable impression and his dynamic and forceful personality registers to the great advantage of himself and his people. From the following article, which appeared in a recent issue of the Oregon Journal, it will be seen that Mr. LaVatta’s ideas are strongly en dorsed by the editor of that paper—read: “Work is the salvation of the Indian,” said George P. La Vatta, full-blooded Shoshone Indian, to the Portland Kiwanis club last Tuesday. His own pic turesque story illustrates. He was born on an Indian reservation in Idaho. There he spent his childhood. Until he was well grown he did not know a word of English. Then he heard of the offer of the United States government to give him an education. With schooling came ambition. ‘ ‘I want to go out in the world and work and live like other people, ’ ’ he told the Indian agent. “Don’t try it,” was the advice in return. “Go back to the farm and work with your people.” Instead, he walked weary miles to a Union Pacific station. He asked for a job. At first it was not forth coming. “They told me,” he related, “that Indians are lazy and the only good Indian is a dead one.” Nevertheless, he persisted. He induced the railroad people to give him work. From the bottom he went toward the top. The United States department of the interior, in recognition of his earnestness and industry, appointed him head of the division of Indian employ ment. “People try to sympathize with me,” he said, “because the white man killed the buffalo and took the Indians’ lands. I tell them that belongs to the past. The Indian on a reservation can only deterior ate. But if he will go out and work and live like other people he has a future as promising as that of any other American citizen.” The advice that George La Vatta gives to his people is the advice that when given and followed has ac counted for success and fulfilled ambition in all the present and past. Regardless of race or creed, it is the key. In both Portland and the Oregon country no more challenging summons could be heard than “Work.” On Thursday evening Mr. Teter, head of our dairy department, and his assistant, Mr. Shishkin, motored over to Monmouth to attend a lecture sponsored by the Holstein Cattle Breeders’ Association. Mr. Berry, in charge of the machine and blacksmith shops, accom panied them.
