Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1872-10-15
Mr.. Greeley on Education.

n1ade two speeches, one on education and one
on agriculture. The following is synopsis of
the one on education delivered before the Nor
NAL School, il -
Education, my young friends, has its legiti-
mate objects, the development of the man or
woman, Intellectually or mentally, and the de-
velopment of the workman. When [ advocate
the prosaic side Of the question of education I
do not mean to disparage the other. From the
days of Plato it has been understood that educa-
ton makes the man, and his fitness for the ext
gencies Of the world will come after. I have
known not less than thousand thoroughly
educated-that is, expenslvely educated men,
in New York-men who have entered German
or English or American colleges, and have been
sent forth with diplomas, who are yet utterly
unable to earn their bread and are to-day pa
cling the stony streets In vain search for some
thing to do. [ consider it the reproach and
shame of education that while every robust,
temperate ignoramus that lands upon our shores
with money enough to buy an axe is morally
certain to earn his bread, to become in time a
thrifty citizen, his children being heirs to all
the possibilities of our condition, the educated
man is not so certain My condemnation of
education is that it is not complete, it is not
fully rounded. 1t does not prepare US for the
exigencies of life. The German student, who
has become dyspeptic over his midnight art.
who can discourse learnedly of Kant, of Hogel
and of Spinosa, yet has not been taught how to
earn his bread. When [ say my daughters
ought to be scientific cooks, do not mean that
cooking is the chief end Of Womanhood, for
some women have aspirations to become law
yers and even Presidents-it is getting on to
that end, believe Laughterl-but mean
that they should have some accomplishment in
perfection with which the world is not likely to
get out of fashion. A bad education sends man
into the world useless. Educated men, while
they are capable of better work than mere man
ual labor, ought in the absence of that better
work to be able to do the manual work better
than the uneducated man. If they have to dig
bitches they ought to dig them better than the
ignorant man. When old men are asked to
pay ST 900 for sons education they say thew
don't know about it. This education is not ef-
fcient in their sphere of life. A farmers son
ought to come back from college qualified to
show his father how better to work his farm
IF not, if he returns with great deal of philos-
ophy and mathematics and sciences out of the
range of the old mans apprehension, such edu-
cation is likely to be unduly disparaged. We
ought to expend more money than we do now
on education, but we must make the people
who pay the money realize the good in educa-
ton. | am told that the higher and more abb
struse studies are an excellent discipline for the
mind. But why will not more solid truths, less
out of the way truths, serve as discipline as
well as these? | have been forty-six years
away from school. never had aught but
common education. My life might have been
more useful and better otherwise, for I have
travelled all over this earth, from the Adriatic
sea on the east to the Pacific ocean on the west,
and every day | have deplored the want of
knowledge of chemistry and geology as [ walk
H.. nd fbo ,lr, oe
God s creation across plains which spoke with
God s eoquence, which my limited education
prevented me from enjoying | had no other
time for schooling than in the winters of the
first ten years of my youth. / never saw dur
ing that time book on chemistry or geology
never knew that such books existed-and I feel
now that my life would have been more useful
and more enjoyable if [ had had time and the
chance to study them. Learn all we will we
are still impertectly taught. Let the little that
the student may know, then, irradiate the path
just about him. When graduates say II am
educated, and therefore cannot work with my
eating your people out of usefulness. The true
man will do the best work that to-day presents
| to him. Labor is becoming with our advanced
civilization more intellectual and less physical
In few years steam will supply all the physical
| forces of industry The noblest duties are
teaching us how more rapidly to create these
new processes, and in time all the forces requir-
ed will be furnished by artificial power. But I
do not disparage the ends of education. The
man is, after all, the thing to be perfected. The
university student must have bread, and know
ledge of the old philosophers is not readily turn
| ed into bread | would have no man sent out
not qualified to earn his living by his hands, if
need be. would have each graduate better
/ al hat ho Bod n
desert island he could get along all the better
for his education. would have education
bristling with good points, SO that, encased in
| it, he could the better meet charge of cavalry,
an attack of artillery or Of bayonets, or any at
tack in which the emergencies of life may pre-
sent themselves. This, young people, is my
conception of what education ought to be.