The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1882-05-07
The Sort of Education they Need.

knowledge come to us for advice as to the
proper course for them to pursue to attain
the end they desire. They want to get ahead
in life and to improve their condition. If they
are able to repair the deficiencies in their cd
ucation. they believe, the road will be made
| easier for them.
But they commonly make the mistake OF
supposing that mere general education will
| be OF great and sure practical advantage to
| them; that by means of it they will be enabled
| to lift themselves above the work by which
they now make their living, and obtain bet
| ter incomes and higher consideration In &C.
equations more intellectual. Some Of them
| think that II they were not forced to earn
wages at trades they have learned, but could
spend few years in college, they would be
far nearer fortune and much surer OF renown
than they now are They imagine that q
profession is both more lucrative and more
agreeable than a trade. They seem to sup
pose that a college works some mysterious
change in man, and opens to him avenues
to wealth and distinction from which those
who have not pursued its course are per-
force debarred.
| But at our colleges, as commonly conduct
cd, n young man gets only a general train
| ing. llc 10 lIltN lOl SItNlliS Nolh, anu
oftentimes his energies are rather scattered
than concenl rated there. When he leaves he
is ready for no practical employment, perhaps
is not so we'll fitted for useful and profitable
labor as he was when he began his college
course. After he is graduated, he must set
himself to learning how TO make living,
something he has not studied in college.
If a young man intends preparing himself
to be a lawyer, physician, n clergyman, or
writer, he does well to go to college, pro-
viding he chooses one where the students are
really trained Systematically, and is deter
mined to improve the advantages it offers.
If he can afford to spend four or five years
or more in obtaining an elegant education
for its sake alone, them also, let him enter one
of our best colleges. But a young man who
cannot afford such a luxury, and who has no
inclination to profession to which a college
education is a necessary or desirable pre-
liminary, who has his living to make first OF
all, may well hesitate before giving up SO
long time to study which is not essential to
his success. The college course cannot mako
him a wcll-educated man, though it may pre-
pare him for making himself one. II, how
ever, he must at once turn his hand to what
will pay best ninc-tenths OF the little he has
learned in the course may be OF so slight use
to him and so rarely employed by him that
he will soon forget it. He has spent four
years, not in learning the specific things he
requires at the end, but in getting n smatter
ing Of knowledge about languages, mathe-
MATES, philosophy, and science, which is Of
little practical benefit to him. He may not
even have acquired the habit Of Intelligent
application.
To know something well and thoroughly,
and to train his Judgment and perfect his
skill in some one employment-tha should
be the aim Of n young man who is ambitious
of getting ahead by his own labor. The
range OF knowledge is too wide in modern
times for any one person to compass it, but
it is possible for one person, with or without
a college education, to master single branch
of knowledge, and to train his aptitude in Il
single direction or in few directions to high
perfection. Having done that, provided the
skill is one for which there Is wide or Il con-
siderable demand, he has made his living
secure. 1t is because they have not done
that that so large share of coegebrcd men
are supcrnumcrarics in society They are
unused to manual labor, and there is no sort
of intellectual labor for which they have been
specially fitted. They have been taught but
they cannot be successful teachers. They
have learned languages and have studied
logic and rhetoric, but they cannot write
logically or acceptably. They have strug-
glcd with the rules of grammar of Latin
and Greek, and yet they may not be able TO
speak or write English correctly, not 10 say
forciby or elegantly.
We have so many colleges in the United
States, and there is 50 strong pressure
brought by the weak ones to get students,
that too many young men who are not so
situated that they can afford to pursue the
course are brought in, and thereafter are in
eapactatcd for the work that comes in their
way, or acquire n disgust for it, They are
not half educated, and yet they expect Ia
compete with those who are really trained
intellectually.
A young man to the north of us, having
determined to enter college" writes rs follows
"lmtcnd goins 10 either Harvard or Yale College,
very poor, ana totally deficient in Greek and Latin
though have fair knowledge Of English literature aud
general history. You may say like many other nolli
gent men, that there is little difference But see diff
ference, to ne avery great one, and you viii do me
favor by advising me, shouh, believe, study tic
J faculty of arts perhaps medicine"
The above letter was so badly spelled that
, short as ii was, we had TO make many cor.
' rcction5 in ii. Moreover, it asks no explicit
questions, and shows mind badly trained
Yet the writer claims fair knowledge OF
English literature and history, and proposes
to try To get into Harvard or Yale. Judging
from this letter, he could not pass the exam
= nation for admission to an ordinary gram,
, mar school. Ii is probable that he could not
7 answer q single one Of the very difficult
; questions now propounded at the entrance
, examinations at the colleges he names, and
could not solve the simplest OF the mathc
| NAUTICAL problems that would be there pre-
posed.
He would waste his time and his money il
going to Cambridge or New Haven to under
take to get into college, He needs al least two
: or three years of preliminary discipline, moi
I merely in Latin and Greek, but in Englisl
, also, and he must acquire the habit of study
, In which, we infer, he Is lamentably deficient
= He is very poor, too, and ought at once to b'