Smyrna times., 1877-04-11
Over Education Of the Masses.

A recent writer in the Baltimore An,eri
can says:
Education should be adapted to the
needs of its recipient. A boy that is to be
brought up tailor should not be obliged
to lose two or three years of his youth in
learning shoemaking. Equally absurd and
unjust is it for him to have to lose said
precious years in the study of Latin and
algebra. These latter studies are very good
for those whose parents possess the means
to keep their sons at their studies during
the years required to master them, and to
afterwards place said sons in either of the
learned professions, or any other position
where it is not necessary for the youth
himself to become his own bread winner.
But apart from the injustice of making
our taxpayers pay for such advanced stu
dies at the public schools, is it not doing
their scholars an injury to keep them there
at these higher branches after they have
learned the rudiments of an English educa-
tion, when by SO doing they are disqualified
from filling those positions in life for which
most of them are destined, and by which
alone they are expecting to win their own
living? allude to the mass of the boys in
our public grammar schools and the Balti-
more City College, who are educated at the
public expense-sons of honest carpenters,
bricklayers, tailors and shoemakers-who
should be learning the trades or occupations
of their parents during these extra years
consumed in useless, profitless studies.
What are these youths to do who go
through the higher studies of the schools
They either scorn the business followed by
their less pretentious fathers and refuse to
| follow it (prefering to eat the bread OF
idleness at the parents expense), or if they
do attempt tc follow it, which is rare, they
are too old to commence at the bottom of
| the ladder of apprenticeship and go up
through all the practical details necessary
to make a skilled workman. They are
spoiled as good mechanics or farmers, and
simply swell the already Overcrowded
ranks of those seeking to enter profession
al or mercantile life; or unable to get the
means to do this, they degenerate into that
most useless and pitiful class-drones oil
society-young men about town, ashamed
of honest mechanical work, and unable to
get anything to do that suits their views
after becoming so highly educated.
What is the remedy? Take them from
school at fourteen or fifteen years of age al
the latest. If by that time they have not
acquired enough education to enable them
to acquire more in the intervals from labor
they are only fit to become hewers of wooo
and drawers of water. Our best anC
smartest men have been partly selEeduca
ted. 1t is a capital school for mental dis
cipline. Elihu Burritt, the learned black
smith, the greatest lnguist in America
taught himself in the intervals whilst labor
ing at his forge. II was never intended
that the taxpayers of our country should b,
taxed for more than the amount necessary
to instruct the boys and girls of the publ,
schools beyond reading, writing, arithmeti
and geography. This over education
makes them all scorn the labor which is t.
make up the future greatness and pros
perity of our Republic.