The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1886-01-29
A REMEDY FOR AIMLEssNEss.

age tneln I'D pun Win, anu Hol aSainNt
me, in all school work. than anything ]
have tried. Western School JonrRGi.
REMEDY FOR AIMLESSNESS.
In the early days of Massachusetts the
whites offered To educate som" Indian
boys. They received this reply from the
chiefs:
Several of our young people were
educated ut one of your schools. When
they came back to us they were bad rum
ners; ignorant of every means of living
i'm the woods: unable TO bear cold or
hunger; knew neither how TO build II
wigwam. take deer, or kill IN enemy;
spoke our language impcrfectly. and
were neither fit for hunters. councillors.
or warriors; they were totally good for
nothing"
.'Send us they added, .'some of your
boys; we will take pains with their edu-
cation, and make men of them.
The above story illustrates II thought
prominent in the minds OF many persons
who are not enemies, or even critics. of
our school system. Are we obtaining
desired results? Considering the cX-
penditure of time and money, are we
accomplishing what may be reasonably
expected of us? These are fair questions
which the public have right to ask.
More than this, there arr. those who hon.
estly doubt whether, with ali our efforts,
we are doing anything more than hold
inc certain evils in check. simply hold
ing our own. hpt gaining no new
ground.
To-day the thought of educat orS. and
Of writers. for the public press is strong
ly directed towards the influence of
work upon the character and life of
man. Work is Gods gift; laziness is an
invention of the evil one, Labor is the
sourSc of all moral virtues: every vice is
nuriured by idl"ness.
The tendency hitherto has been to
educate the child into emptiness, to
send him out with his head full of facts.
with his intellect fairly well dev eloped,
but with no high Impulse to great deeds
burning Within with the springs of
noble action dried up; having neither
the power'nar the will Ia act q mans
part in the great battle for God and
humanity. on which the world is just
entering; str.ckcn in the morning Of life
with moral paralysis.
This Is a Sererc Indictment.
Let us try il in the court of reason,
Heredity is not confined to biIth-marks,
it shows itself all along the limo OF our
educational system. We say and do a
thousand things in our schools simply
because of the traditions of our fathers.
There has come 10 us, as an in
| heritance. the habit of exalting brain
labor. We call the chjld's attention to
the beautiful things Of I,ongfellow. or
| Whittier, or Tennyson. We hold up to
him the example of the great and good
for his imitation. But we do not teach
him that there is nobleness in the hand
that has grown hard and callous by daily,
toll; majesty in the muscles that,
through useful labor. have become like
iron bands; that the man who mends a
wagon. or cleans watch, or repairs the
engine, ministers us much to the welfare
of society, and is just rs honorable in
his sphere. us he who writes Il poem or
paints picture. or holds an Office. In
short. he is not made to realize that the
art is no greater than the artisan; that
the machine is produced Jointly by the
conceit of the brain and the skill Of the
hand.
We have also inherited an idea that
society owes duty TO the school; it is
now time to consider the duty which the
school owes society. We ought to fill
the child with the thought that he is q
debtor to his race; that he will rank as a
defaulter unless he meets the claim
which the future has put upon him.
'Ihn time will at NJ Iista MT 1aV
when, in the interest of sound morals,
some one will work out the problem of
industrial training, not with the narrow
purpose of teaching the child trade,
but with the broader purpose of enabling
him to act as well as speak: to do, as
well as think not, however, with the
idea of giving him something 10 do, but
to give him the idea of doing something;
SO that when he leaves school, whether
he becomes blacksmith's apprentice,
or clerk behind the counter, or enters
an office, he may be able TO blend all
energies of his head, heart. and hand to
making himself perfect in his work.
Ont of 1,0l4 inmates in one of the
Pennsylvania penitentiaries only7 are
mechanics. In another prison in the
same state. of l,G05 prisoners 1919 had
no trades; in another of 1883 inmates
$50 had no trade; nearly all these
prisoners, however, could read and
write. Ont of 1868 in Auburn, 1882
had more or less education. Out of
2,l84 arrests at one station in Chicago,
ABS had no settled occupation.
There is question here which greatly
exceeds that of illiteraracy, in the com
mon acceptation of the word.
In every penitentiary in the land the
records show that a large percentage of
the prisoners are men who have no fixed
calling. to follow which requires Il train
ed intellect and skilled hand In one
OF our large Iowa cities, not long ago,
the sheriff marched nine prisoners,
handcutlcd together, from the jail to the
court house, not one of whom was over
twenty years of age. What brought
those boys there? Idleness,-a DISPOSE
ton to get their living without returning
any equivalent, to get their bread with
out the sweat of their brow.
There is another problem yet to be
wrought out, of providing work for those
who are wiling to work but have nothing
to do. The cities are full of young men
and boys drifting into idleness and
crime, through sheer necessity. An or
ganized effort in this direction would
save thousands of useful citizens to the
state.
Il radical defect EXISTS Somewhere in
oar school system.
Is it not an inherited disposition on
our part to say too much about the pos
sibilities of life? We have held up. as
an incentive, that the child may possibly
be President, or governor, or congress-
man,-it would be far better to say to
him that he will probably be black
smith, printer, day laborer of some
kind. We on hit to SO educate the child
in reference to the probabilities before
him, that out of these probabilities he
may derive so much vigor that he will
grow up to the full measure of every
thing which is possible. He only is
truly great who is able to meet the ne
cessities of life rs they arise from day to
day.