The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-07-04
Educational Dress Parades.

The schools, high, graded, normal,
academic, collegiate, have filled their
annual space in the public eye. Under
principals, presidents and stats of teach
ers the young men and maideps have been
marshaled before partial friends and a
curious or critical public. Bands of mu-
sic have given eclat to the intellectual
evolutions of young ideas and the pomp
and circumstance of graduation, the -four
ish, ceremony and festivity of the COM
mencement season have gilded these edu-
cational anniversaries with growing
splendor. The youthful heroes of these
occasions, who have bravely endured the
plaudits of friends, and have faced with
out finching the floral artillery of their
feminine admirers, will go from the tender
arms of " cherishing mother to learn by
painful experiences the wide difference
between the real battle of life and the
dress parade of college days. To some
the unwelcome discovery will come that
school-day preparation for life is ill
adapted to life itself, that the work of
education must in large measure be
done over again to meet the exigencies of
severely practical world, that the men,
tai equipment furnished by the schools is
as unsuited to the real business of life as
the gold lace, the fine uniforms and the
gay trappings of a military parade to the
stern business of war;
The conventional anniversary orator is
apt to exult in the glory of the schools
and to extol without just discrimination
the advantages and blessings which they
confer. The general tone of oratorical
laudation seems to be based upon hazy
abstract idea of the general benefits of
an education. Concerning an education
which should be neither a succulent
mass of fiabby tissue, comely in sp.
pearance, but sinewless as baby's arm,
nor yet dry skeleton of material acquire.
ments reduced to the naked needs of
bread and butter, of professional success,
or of amassing fortunes, there seems to be
little known in the schools and less said
at their annual displays of their learning
and their achievements. With an educa-
ton which shall be practical without
being angular and distorted, which, with
relieving culture, shall change rough
corners into "lines of beauty" or which
shall convert flaccid mental fiber into
hard flesh and tough brain-muscle, teach
ers from the common school upwards need
greater experience. Incapacity and in
efficiency are not confined to common
school instruction. They who in the high
schools and colleges assume to prepare
young men and women for the duties and
experiences of the world should them
selves have some knowledge of the world.
Book learning alone will not suffice for
true teacher. Could the instructors of
the young come out from their clustered
seclusion and serve for while in the
ranks of business and professional life,
their subsequent educational labors would
undoubtedly be more wisely directed and
they might, to some extent, share in the
disgust sometimes felt for the preparation
which the schools, common or high, give
the young for their life work. Special
schools have been established to remedy
the defects in the course of study at
what are styled the literary institutions
Special studies are necessarily narrowing
in their tendency. The youth of the
country should be able to find in the
higher schools and colleges, under really
efficient instructors, course of study
which shall impart liberal culture and
which will at the same time graduate
them into the world useful citizens, ready
and able in some manly or womanly vo
cation to take care of themselves.