Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1881-02-16


ity Of the pupils who must, by manual la
Dor skill and industry support themselves,
enrich the nation, and supply the means OF
all progress, be incomparably better fitted
for their life's work when so instructed in Its |
elementary principles than now2 Why this
cavalier dismissal of these subjects from
and this Indifferent relegation |
of them to an indefinite future, by the head
Of an industrial college, the purposed func-
tion of which II was 10 turn out pupils quail
flied to give just this kind Of instruction
DR.. b. attempts to meet the objection |
to his proposed higher mathematics, class
les and literature as the mental food of pu-
pills coming from and going back to indus
trial life, but he does not meet it fairly. He |
anticipates the inquiry, What are the uses |
of these studies for farmer and replies,
" Certainly as much use as for lawyer, a |
doctor or a minister" Then he quotes the |
objector as replying, "Just so, large part |
of what they study in the schools is of no
use to any one," and retorts, " And yet il
uoCo hPptdi bhhu bhuSC VIM hdNO ~
through this training are, as u generai rilie,
brighter, more capable, more accomplished
than those who have not" Now, doubtless,
persons can be found here and there who
will say, hastily, that such studies are "of
no use to any one" But no thoughtful per-
son says 80. He admits their value, not
only as means of mental discipline, but
also because, as Lord Bacon says, there is
no knowledge but in skilful hand serves
either positively as is, Or else to illustrate
some other knowledge" This, however, is
not the point at issue. Granting all that
will be claimed for that sort of education,
and the question at once springs up, " Is it
the best for the youth who are to be the great
working force of the nation ?" Give that
training to the leaders of thought, to the
philosophers, the poets, the historians, the
metaphysicians of the future, but give to the
future workingmen the lessons he needs to
make him more intelligently skilful in all
the duties of his handicraft. With this end
in view, no one can deny the superiority of
the study of the natural sciences for those
whose daily work has to do with natural
forces and natural objects.
DR.. Buckham declares, at this point, that
to give the boy intended for the law, or for
the pulpit, a collegiate education, and not to
give it also to the boy going to the anvil or
the plow, is as unjust as it would be to leave
one twice as much property as the other.
Yet he admits that "the probability of his
actually becoming farmer grows less the
more education [of this kind you give him,
and that simply because his education has
given him the power to gain more of the de-
sirable things of life with less work in some
other way than by farming We hardly
reconcile this last assertion with the prevail
ing complaint that while all the professions
and commercial life are overcrowded, young
mechanics are gaining incomes such as the
young lawyer, physician or clerk cannot hope
to reach until after long years of the hardest
kind Of "work" and waiting. The same
would be equally true of agriculture, were
Tho came strict training believed to be nec-
essary for that business as for the mechan-
ical trades. Unprosperous farmers are SO,
usually, because they are bunglers in their
art.
Just here we would like to ask DR.. Buck
ham whether, in giving all his boys collie
giate education, with the sciences left out,
he is not involving himself in the guilt of
that same one-sided "caste" education-that
tyranny and cruelty"-which he charges
upon the farmer who gives to his sons linn
tied technical education in the direction of
agriculture We cannot see why course
of high mathematics, classics and literature,
without the natural sciences, is not Just as
narrow as an equally thorough course of
English and scientific schooling. A broad
and full culture would have to embrace both,
at this stage of the worlds progress.
DIR. Buckham in speaking of the value of
collegiate course to farmer, makes no
distinction between the literary and the in
dustrial college. He says '"I refuse to
allow that the probability Of his being a
farmer will make any difference in the ques-
tion. can see no good reason why should
favor the boy who is going to be a lawyer or
physician over his brother who is going to
be farmer, by sending one TO college and
not the other" All right. But can the
doctor see no difference between sending
the brother who is going to be lawyer to
the law-school, and his brother who is going
| tn ba n, tho
the same training answer equally for BOTH
1t may be admitted that, were life long
enough, both the surgeon and the lawyer
would be advantaged by pursuing both
courses. 1t is useful to surgeon TO be ac-
quainted with law, and for lawyer to know
something about surgery. Many in each
profession are more or less accomplished in
this way. But here are two boys in the
same family, neither of them with the time
or the money to spare for more than a single
course. One wishes to be a minister and
the other farmer. Shall they both take
the same course, or shall one go TO the
school originally designed for training min
listers, and the other to a school designed to
furnish farmers with the knowledge adapted
to the work of the farm? No one knows
better than DIR. Buckham that the primary
object and purpose of all our New England
colleges was to educate ministers. Their
entire equipment, even that on the side of
natural science, has been designed and
adapted TO that end, and few have any fault
to find with the results attained. They are
not theological schools, it is true, and their
various departments are more or less availa-
BILE as means of instruction for the ends of
law, medicine, literature, OF gentemanly
ease and general culture but II is utterly
absurd to say that they are equally adapted
to industrial ends.
DIR. Buckham is the official head of lit
erary college, and is also the head of what
is nominally an industrial college. The at
tempt has been made for now more than a
dozen years TO have the two lie down
together, and it has succeeded, but only be-
cause one has swallowed the other. An in
dustrial college with a set of teachers ex-
actly like those literary college-with not
one single distinctively industrial instructor
is in no honest sense an industrial school
at all. This has been our objection TO it,
and that this objection is general is proved
demonstratively by the fact that the uni
yersity has never yet had any classes in its
so-called industrial department, Sufficient
time has elapsed for the thorough trial of
an experiment that many saw to be foreor-
dained to failure. Has II not been sufii-
ciently tried Is it not failure And
being failure (saying nothing about the
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