Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1883-02-15
PUBLIC SCHOOLS VERSUS HARD WORK.

Keen and experienced observers are bring
ing grave indictments against our common
school system. They charge that it is rails
ing up a dangerous class of genteel idlers
and ofiice-seekers; that it advances the pu-
pill just far enough into the elegancies of cd
ucat0n and book knowledge to unfit him
for the occupations of the common aborcr
and the rewards of common industries. We
are told that the high school graduate dis
dains to be ranked with a "greasy opera
tive" or to soil his lily hands in the effort
ic's bench or on the farm. The late Thur
low Weed declared in substance the demor-
aliZng influence of this false idea of life and
manhood to be showing itself i'll all ever-ln-
creasing crowd of young oflce-Seekers who
are both too proud and too lazy to plow or
to drive the plane for daily bread. The
number of Office-seekers is to-day, he says,
four or five times larger than it was 30 years
ago, and in the fierce scramble they are
ready to sell themselves, body and soul, to
the highest bidder. a distinguished citizen
of Brooklyn, following in the same strain,
complains that that city is over-run with
public school graduates who are possessed
with the ruinOus notion that they can get Il
living by their wits-honeSt sweat Is the one
thing abhOrred. 1t is needless to predict
oUl VI SllCll Al llDllUll Will DS q
brood of future vagabOnds as injurious to
the community as the phylloxera to the
vine. The radical defect Of our schools lies
in failure to mould character. There is
nothing in textbooks, from the speller to
the algebra, from the rule Of three to the
French exercise, to enforce the claims OF
honor and industry nothing to inspire the
boy with an ambition to accomplish useful
work for himself and his fellow men. The
teacher might supplement his deficiency, if
he were only right himself, in his views of
the dignity, the utility, the virtue, the man
hood to be found in honest manual toll but
too many of the teachers themselves have
yet to learn the deep meaning and regener-
ate force of quaint old George Herbert'S ST.
perb lines:
'Who sweeps Il room as for thy laws
Makes that and the action fine
What this country, then, most cmphati-
cally needs is new and nObler race of pub
lie school teachers, who shall possess more
of the spirit of William DmlOck, the noble
principal of Adams Academy ut Quincy.
ThiSnlan aimed to form character even more
than to teach the contents of textbooks.
Over his desk was Il picture of the cross, en-
twined with the above couplet from Herbert
and another motto from Carlyle, as follows:
"What hast thou to dO with happiness, cX-
cept the happiness of getting thy work well
done ," If this thought of finding happiness
in work, and work well done, were only
pressed by all our teachers upon the atten-
ton Of their pupils so us to drive out the sill
ly desire to grasp only after "accomplish-
ments," we would hear far less noise from
the drone buzzing idly around the public
hive, and rejoice in far greater stores OF hon
ey accumulated by the thrifty workers. 1t
would, of course, be unjust to say that oH
our teachers forget to exhibit and enforce
the original law given by God to man III
Eden, and which has never yet been repeal
ed, viz. "In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread till thou return unto the
ground, for out of it thou vast taken, for
dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou re-
turn ;" but that many of them do forget
this, nay that some of them despise it, is
painfully evident in the aims, character and
career Of the pupils trained by them. AS
the oak lies in the acorn, so the destiny of
this republic lies largely in the public school.
Christian TT Work.