Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-04-07

all the stages OF service, practically M,
tering each department up to the dirss
ton of, say, q great transportion ~
tenn or other enterprise of national N.Y.
nitude. The steps are too manva -,
the ascent too great. To q larger a y
tent also, the real workers must rem,%;'
subordinate while the heirs of cant,
command the higher stations. How y
they being educated for their great W
s%ponsibility?
The speaker above referred to dvs,
with much feeling upon the inadeouss
of the traditional systems of educatiS
to meet this new requirement. With
few exceptions our great educational \
situations, and still more the SMALL.
ones, are in grasp and spirit far behina
the age and entirely out of ,eympa,h,
with the modern world which the ris;n.
generation is soon to take possession ~
From the moment the boy begins n
prepare for college he faces the past.
educationally he lives in the past; and
the more conscientiously he does tn.
work laid out for him the vaster will hs
the final gap between college life and
real life. The intellectual habits ac4
CURED in school and college NAV posi-.
bly, enable him ultimately to grappls
with greater power and skill with thu
later problems of real life, greater, that
is, than he would have shown had he
been left entirely unschooled; yet in the
administration Of affairs he is likely to
be distanced for the best part of his Life
by the unschooled, practical man WIN
knows from early and real experience
precisely what to do in any emergency,
The young man fresh from school i
apt to know with thoroughness much
that the busy world has no use for. He
has general notions of many arts and
sciences, but his positive knowledge Of
the realities upon which such arts and
sciences are based is usually next In
nothing; still less does he know of the
practical methods of men who apply
them to human uses. His educational
years have been spent mainlyin a world
apart from and largely out of relation
enter upon when his schooling ends.
His education, admirable as it may an
pear from a theoretical point of view.
serves rather to unfit than to fit him for
practical life; and his real education
has to begin afresh in the rude and
costly school of experience.
This of course, on the assumption
that the youths education has been
wholly by school work. Fortunately
there are few boys who do not rebel
more or less against the routine Of
schooling, and SO gain under protest,
often by stealth, a partial preparation
for real life. If the schools did not usu-
ally get the credit for good results OBJ.
tanned in this way by the independent
and unencouraged efforts of their on.
pills, it is probable that it would be much
easier than it is to do away with the
traditional distractions to real educa.
ton which linger IN most schools and
courses of study.
One of the great problems of today
is to infuse q larger share of modern
spirit into school life and school work:
to lessen largely the amount of book
learning and increase the proportion of
individual effort in dealing directly with
realities; in short, to make the student
more of a doer and less of q passive re-
cipient of vague generalities.
The progress of the schools in thi.
direction during recent years has not
been small : vet it has hsen slight and
,i->s.aA compared with the rapid a
general advance in public needs and in
dlvidual requirements. In every de-
partment of active life the call is for
men untrammeled by tradition, men.
trained to challenge every alleged fact
and natural law until its truth is proved;
bold men, used to the solution of real
problems and undaunted by novel diff
%culties; alert men. ready to grasp every
opportunity for Improvement in ma.
terlals and processes, and skilled in the
use OF everything that ministers to eco
nomical success. The schools should
help to develop such men. Now thew
oftener hinder such developments.
Scientific american.