Milford chronicle., 1888-11-30
VIEWS ON sgLF EDUCATION.
Each Mind Must Be It's Own school House.
Self Is the An.

SELF Is the AL
After a youth has passed through the COM
mon school Of country or city, self education
becomes not only possible but easy. So much
depends upon self that a college course is
valuable only 50 far as the student exerts his
own personal win power and makes himself
master of the situation. Colleges offer an
opportunity, but they cannot make a scholar
cannot make an orator or doctor or a
statesman. The college professor feels how
powerless he is when the parent or guardian
Of fashionable, rich and indolent lad intro
duces this mortal to the teacher and ex-
presses desire TO have a man made out Of
the well dressed and well fed material; but
when an earnest, open. faced, perhaps pow
erty stricken farmer boy has walked fifty
miles to find a group Of professors
and a collection Of books, there is
joy In the faculty, from the president
down to the humblest tutor, because a
young man has come who can make a scholar
out Of himself In the first twelve years Of
life a school is needed; in all the remainder
Of life each mind must be its own school
house and keep its own school
There are many forms Of human win and
many shadings Of taste Often when the
win power is great enough to bind mind to
the daily task Of student there is not taste
enough in the heart to call the will power
into action. A Chicago man, who had ex-
hRusted love and money both in the attempt
TO make his son absorb in some manner tho
text books Of the best institutions, found at
last, to his surprise and delight, that his son
possessed great taste and talent as a drafts
man and machinist He cared nothing for
Homer, but he could make locomotive
Since this development took place the father
has had peaceful time of it, for his son is
running with great zeal along his own good
path.
One of the finest surgeons in the United
States went through a college, indeed but
when he graduated he knew "little Latin and
less Greek" but there was not a medical
work in the library he had not had in his
room for special study, and there was not a
bone in the room of anatomy which he did
not prize above a lesson in astronomy or
surveying.
One Of the advantages Of self education
lies in the fact that it permits a strong viii
to follow a personal taste. An explanation
Of the great success often Of what are called
self made men may be found in their free
dom to follow the path Of most attractive
ness. Many a mind is diverted by the father
or mother. or by the dignity of college
course or faculty, from the channel for
which nature fitted it, and thus genius dies
not Of neglect but Of too much attention.
A writer in an American review saws:
"After II a recitation is a qualification ~
The writer evidently means that when a stu
dent has reached that age he should be alb
soTbed in his own business and should not
file out to say lesson in anatomy or in cal
culus when he has on his table an unfinished
essay upon some theme in politics or ethics.
Whether this remark about the seventeenth
year be true or not, it illustrates the thought
that the best part Of education is conducted
by self rather than by tutor. If a man or
a youth finds himself unable to go to college,
he need not feel that all is lost, or that half
or third is lost. Self is the all. 1t is that
something which rises above the schoolhouse.
Professor David Swing ia Chicago Journal