Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1885-05-07
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WHAT IS EDUCATION
SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS ON IN I'M
PORTANT SUBJECT.

PORTATT SUBJECT.
An old adage reads: "Study not for
amusement, but for improvement" This
conception originated at period when all
amusement was deemed as verging more or
less on the sinful by our New England an
cestors, and life was considered as relatively
perfected when all recreation had been
stamped out of it.
Why might not the adage read: "Study
both for amusement and improvement, and
let all attempt at study cease as soon as it
becomes irksome and a drudgery."
Have you ever been teacher? And, if
so, can you from the inmost depth of con-
science and truth say that any profit results
to the child forced to plod over any study
which it does not like and which you find it
impossible to make it like?
application called 'study," its memory may
hold few words or sentences of whose real
meaning its mind may have no real notion.
After two months vacation and the
child resumes its studies, how often have
these correct answers utterly vanished
from its memory.
May not the training or cultivation of
memory be mistaken for training of mind,
whereof memory seems but an adjunct?
On the basis that through the Over-cultiva-
tion or straining of one department the rest
are neglected and injured, and the balance
between all destoyed, may not this over
the end in view?
| What is the end in view? Do you desire
your son to leave school or college walking
encyclopedia of facts and figures, very learn
ed, indeed an infallible authority in the
family parlor, yet unable, despite the vol
umes of memorial knowledge within him,
to earn over ten dollars week as the litera-
ry hack in some sterotyped department Of
school book publishing firm?
Or would you rather see him possessed
even of fewer facts and more constructive
ability-ability to make his knowledge use
full in building upa business; ability to Sc
lect what knowledge he needs for that busi-
ness and skill to apply it; in brief, ability
to build his own bridges when he needs
them, rather than ever to be dependent on
others to build them?
One sea captain, being shipwrecked on an
uninhabited coast, may from the planks and
timbers of his shattered vessel construct q
craft capable of carrying passengers and
crew to a safe port. A mere routine asea
captain, in like situation and without con-
structive ability, is helpless. The first has
the mind trained to learn and cope with new
| SlIuatloLo dilu eiueiSeucleo. Aie oeCouu 10
trained only to walk over the bridge built
for him by others.
Should not education largely involve a
capacity to love to learn new things, and
skill in the art of learning all things, and
this at any time of life? With such learn
ing, it's power ever increasing by exercise,
men and women would, having more conf
dence in themselves, cease less to fear fail
ures or mutations in business, and would
also be less the slaves Of circumstance or po-
SitiOn.
Some men and women are youngerat six
ty than others are at thirty. The first men
toned are ever learning, ever seeking, ex-
ploring, investigating. Nothing, where op-
portunity offers, is too great for them to at
tempt graphing with; nothing is deemed
so small as to be unworthy an effort. Study
becomes their chief amusement. BY study
is not implied an incessant poring over
books. Place them on shipboard and they
commence "picking up" whatever belongs
to maritime life or science in the artists
studio their "dabbling," as some may con-
temptuously style it, grants them fresh in
terest and appreciation in art; at the thea
ter, an aspiration for the stage, though new
er realized, still leads them to study, from
the "front," the actors methods even as
they do those of the artist, enabling them
to see and therefore enjoy the performance
far more than the ordinary play-gOer.
So wherever they 60 they find some new
interest, and each new interest is a new life.
They love to learn, and find pleasure in
the act and effort of learning.
Another and much larger class are through
with all their learning, and a large portion
of active amusement by the age of twenty
set their faces resolutely against learning
anything new, relegate all the more active
recreation to the young, become plodders
from house to office and Office to house, get
stiff in the physical joints at forty, and
rusty in the mental ones at the same age,
and are, to all intents and purposes, "old
men" at fifty, whose talk is mainly of the
weather, who are about as entertaining in
company as the clock, and who are more
endured than liked.
These can find no pleasure in the effort of
learning. Every step in such effort is irk-
| some to them and becomes more so as they
advance in years.
Half the stimulus and vitality of youth
comes because that is the season for learning
new things. Boyhood is a period of inves-
tigation, exploration and study in games
and sports. The world is new to the boy
because there are so many new things to
learn. The world becomes old to the boy
and the boy soon also becomes old when he
imagnes he has nothing new to acquire.
But what is the benefit of learning any
thing at middle age or past it?
1t is the benefit of healthy stimulation.
When the faculties are ever on the alert to
acquire and appropriate all manner of
knowledge and skill there results contin-
ual influx of power and new life both to
mind and body.
"What is the use of my learning any
thing not necessary in my business, or any
thing which l may never be required to
practice ?" one asks.
One use is that mind constantly 80 eXer-
cised acquires more and more facility in the
art of learning. Otherwise it grows rusty,
and worse, dsinclined to seek or learn the
new. 1t loses more and more the art of
making study an amusement. When all
study becomes amusement to a man or WO-
man, the era for them of certain ultimate
cong uest in all undertakings is reached.
A thousand dreaded difficulties and trials
vanish, since in each step toward the end
in view new and interesting study is
found
lis then that the dreaded interview be-
comes also a subject of study. Such a
student having certain wares to sell, stud
les methods of approach to the surley, the
peevish, the supercilious, who in this world
| hold the keys of the position they would
deal with. Half the failures of genius may
be traced to the inability and dread of its
possessors to meet and cope with the coarse
natures and strong wills who hold the doors
through which talent may enter and be seen
Of men or be altogether shut out of sight.
TO meet and cope with the world in this
manner is a study and an art most protita-
BILE to acquire.
An artist may paint admirable pictures,
| but ho lyaS optira1v in his StIl0jO He