Page 121 - Cornelius Hedges Story

For This And Succeeding Generations Gardiner 108

Judge Hedges said that when he was a school boy the idea
prevailed that muscle was a principal qualification for a teacher to
possess, and he had known, in his boyhood, instances where good
teachers had been turned out and muscular hostlers had been put
in, hoping thereby to pound and beat discipline and knowledge into
children by the exercise of brute force and thus making a school
room a kind of slaughter pen. This notion was fast going out of date,
and brain, not muscle, was what is wanted now-a-days in the school
house.346

Thus Hedges placed himself in line with the progressive
educators of that day, and gave Montana further strength and
guidance in forming a true education system and not just a system of
disciplinary institutions. Cornelius’ own diary also briefly outlined
the Institutes’s content and he ended with the comment “closed
successfully.”347

That year he organized and held three more Teachers’ Institutes,
two at Helena, on September 28 and 29, and November 26 and 27,
and at Deer Lodge on December 29 and 30. At the Deer Lodge
Institute, Hedges “as concerned with the passive disinterest of the
teachers, and commented, “Teachers generally did but little.”348

And in his report for 1875, Hedges asked for legislative action
requiring counties with ten schools or more to have annual Teachers’
Institutes. The suggestion was finally made law by the Tenth
Legislature, held in 1877. They designated an institutes’s length at
not less than two days nor more than five days that schools would be
dismissed during the institutes and certified teachers should receive
full pay, and that all persons holding certificates were to attend.349

In the meantime, Hedges continued to sponsor institutes. The
second Madison County Teachers’ Institute was held at Virginia City
on April 21 and 22, 1876, and Cornelius, of course, was there to
assist.350

In November, 1877, he visited the Fort Benton schools and other
schools along the Missouri River. Also, in mid-December of that
year, Hedges visited schools at Missoula and Butte.351