Withee, Clark Co., Wisconsin

The American born may wonder why foreign born people establish schools in this country and teach their children their mother language.

They may argue that this, their adopted country is now their home and they must now sever all links that bind them to their mother land and give their work and sympathy only to the land that gives them their daily bread.

It is human nature to cling to that in which you have your dearest recollections, they are a part of yourself. It is easy enough to transact a common business matter, but it is a transaction of a different nature to change your sympathy from your father land to the adopted one, to feel indifferent to the country in which you were born to national life. The heart and the mind will cling to the sweet recollection of long ago.

It is of great importance to foreigners that live a national life to educate their children in the same love. Although they may never see the land in which their father and mother first saw light; if properly taught, they will have kind feelings in their hearts toward it; they will form a strong unseen link of sympathy between the new and old world.

The best safeguard for such a love is the language of the parents. That is the key which opens for the national treasury and enables them to see, hear and understand.

The children learn the mother tongue at home, but to enable them to enjoy the treasures which their parents are in possession of they must be educated in different branches of knowledge.

To obtain that schools are established throughout the country, during the summer months, the duration varying from two to three months.

There they are taught Danish history, grammar, spelling, reading and writing, Danish geography and singing. Through lectures easily understood, they learn to admire their father land and almost without knowing it, their sympathy is awakened.

The Danish people of Withee, Clark County, Wis. claim to have as much love for their father land as any of their countrymen. They have held a two month summer school for the past few years, and this year it has been increased to three months. The school for this summer is now in session.

We are usually supplied with teachers from the Danish Theological college at Des Moines, Iowa. Young men studying for the ministry use their summer vacation to teach school, thereby earning, not only means by which to study further, but gain practical knowledge of the life and habits in rural districts, which in after years may be of great benefit to them.

P. Rasmussen, a theological student from above named school is teaching for this term. He conducts the school of Withee, which numbers about forty-five pupils, and also the New Denmark school, which has about twenty-five pupils.

The children seem to enjoy the school life, although the smaller one have been tied up at the public schools since last fall. This however, is a sign of the teachers popularity with the young folks and speaks well for his future career.

F. W.

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