The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1880-05-06
How to Educate.

IN our series OF articles last year on
Methods Of Education" (says the In
diana Farmer we alluded at some length
to the splendidly organized and man.
aged Free Institute of Industrial Science
at Worcester, Massachusetts. It has been
in operation now ten years, and the re-
suit Of its work is most important. One
OF our cOtempOraries says Of it: at has
graduated eight classes; and the list of
the residences and occupations of its grad
yates shows them to be, almost without
exception, engaged in honorable and
lucrative occupations. Very naturally
the great majority of them are connected
18th important productive industries.
he directors believe that by combining
practical work with theoretical study,
the students entrance upon professional
life is an expansion of his school life,
and not an abrupt transition to new
mode Of life, and the results seem to
justify the belief. Practice, in this
school, is subjected to three conditions:
First, that it shall be a necessary paIt
Of each weeks work; secondly, that it
shall be jUdiciOusly distributed and
thirdly, that the students shall not ex-
pect or receive any immediate peCuniary
return for it. At the middle of the first
year, every student except the mechani-
cal section chooses some department
under the advice Of the instructors, and,
until his graduation, devOtes ten hours
a week and the month Of July, to praC-
tiCe in that department-that is, for two
and half years. Students who select
chemistry, work in the laboratory; the
civil engineers, at field work or problems
in construction; those who select draw
ing, in the drawing room; and physics,
in the physical laboratory. The mechan-
ical section practice in the workshop
from the beginning of the apprentice
half year, and their practice extends
over the whole course of three and
half years"
The act of Congress creating tho in
dustrial schools in the various States
contemplated just such as this with the
addition embracing agriculture. But
most of these schools have been, through
a total miscOnceptiOn of the field they
were to occupy, or utter incapaCity of.
the management, one or both, cripple
N public esteem and dWarfed into mere
high schools, or starving imitators of
university classics Whenever these
schools are bent to practical ends, like
NAAC " O4LCoLGL 4l4ol4Lul1gLlg IL VIII 1CllLLG
no lobby or begging to get appropriations
from their several State Legislatures, for
then the public will feel that they are
doing a useful, practical work for the in
dustries Of the country and for the classes
who do not aspire to enter the profess
siOns. This latter class embraces over
go per cent. Of the tax paying people, 4
fact which has been totally ignored by
these schools, and which accounts for
their present dWarfed condition.
Is experience worth nothing to our
school-men and school managers? Shall
our public schools, supported by taxa
ton in a large measure-the higher
grades we mean-never come to a rec
OgnitiOn Of practical truths, and afford
st least to the 80 per cent. equal facili-
ties for becoming useful to themselves
and the State, that they do to the 10 per
cent?
ENGLAND, France, Germany and Rus
STA are solving this question in a most
practical way. A number Of Chambers
Journal contains a most interesting arti-
Gle respecting the operations and results
of this method of education in England.
Tkat country gives aid to support schools
of applied science, artisans, mechanics,
ETC., not in the manner that we did by
congressional donations, but with sub
stantially the same encouragement.
The same journal states that at pres
ent fifty thousand young men in England
annually attain respectable proficiency
as artisans, mechanics, and in other in
dustrial pursuits, in these schools. Our
own public institutions offer rare and
abundant facility for young men to enter
the professions, but with it all only a
small per cent. make what they learn of
utility to themselves or the public, and
no opportunity is afforded for entering
the useful industries. Shall we go on
educating thus, while the fact is plain
that nine-tenths of all who go out Of the
schools know how to do nothing that
any one would pay them dollar for?