Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-09-22
AMERICAN MISTAKES.
DISPOSITION TO EDUCATE CHILDREN
FOR EXCEPTIONAL CAREERS.
More Attention Paid to the Fashion f
the Educational Government Than
to Its Quality.

the Educational Government Than
| to Its Quality.
Looking with our eyes but half open,
we can readily see that we are teaching a
false idea in our schools, and are neglect
ing great opportunities outside of school,
in our "eormorantish" struggle for more
money, says 7. NJ. Hurst in the Cunlber-
| land PRESBYTERIAN Reriep, Instead of teach
ing that every man should be a bread
winner, we are striving to impress the
! idea on the child that he is an exception
to the rule, and that, while others may be
expected to work, he is to be promoted to
places of honor and profit without the loss
| of drop of sweat or the exercise of an
ounce of energy. In other words, we are
teaching our boys that they may be every
| one President, and our girls that the
highest and only aim of woman is to wear
tight clothes and pound piano.
These teachings are cruelty false, and
the sooner we abandon them the better
| for the general public welfare. This does
not mean that we are 10 discourage our
| BOYS, but it does mean that we should be
| frank enough to teach them from the start
| that 'life is real, life is earnest" and that
the great victories Of life come only to
! those who fight the hard battles of life
| Neither does it mean to depreciate the
| Importance of the higher culture of woman
nor to disparage her efforts in the direc-
! ton of bodily neatness, but it does mean
F.; that our women should be taught that as
| between bread and music as sustainers of
human life, bread will always be in the
lead, and that large degree of common
sense mixed along with the experiences of
youth would certainly pay handsome DIV
idends to old age and frequently to future
generations.
By all means teach the boy the abla-
tives, datives, genitiyes, vocatives, ETC., and
the girls too, as for that matter, and let
them puzzle over the forty-seventh prob
lem of Euclid till they are both tired, if
they like, and then let them together wake
the music that sleeps beneath the ivory
KEYS; or let them put life on the canvas
till it breathes, if they can but while they
are doing this, let them remember that
men make the shoes of the world, and that
women bake the bread. Teach the boy to
turn grindstone, and let him know that
an augur bores holes-when man furnishes
the motive power, and that the saw cuts
planks under the same conditions. Teach
the girls that graceful movements of body
may be developed in a rolling-pIn drill,
quite as well as in the Spanish fandango;
and do not allow her to lose sight of the
fact that to be able to boil an Irish potato
well is of more importance to the human
race than to know the science of blonding
and banging her hair. To rear good boy
is certainly step in the right direction,
but it is much better to know what he is
good for as you 60 along, and to let him
know that the world needs men who are
good laborers as well as men who make
good Presidents, and that it needs a great
many more laborers than it does Presi-
dents and, at the same time, let his sis
ter know that the world needs more
women who can broil a beefsteak, and
fewer women who are practiced poodle-dog
nurses.
Our false teaching is driving young men
to the cities by thousands, and thus each
year is increasing the strain at our storm
centers at the expense of intelligent effort
in our real wealth-producing centeIs. We
forget that every dollar in the world rep
resents a hundred cents worth of hard
work done by somebody, and we also forget
that the forest and the mine and the farm
furnish the world with all the capital it
ever had, all it has now and all it ever
will have; and we forget, further, that God
made abe country and that man made the
town.
1t is estimated that more than so per
cent of all the men who begin business in
the United States fail at some time in their
business experience. This enormous per-
centage of failure is the result of a wrong
estimate of the forces against which we
must contend, and this estimate comes from
wrong teaching. Why not begin by
teaching some of the sterner facts that
every man must learn at some time in his
life, rather than start young men with no.
tions that experience will sooner or later
compel them to give up? If we could
only see the wrecks of manhood that every
year come from the lists of young men
who start life with "fair prospects :" and if
we could only realize that most of these
were wrecked on breakers against which
| they had not been warned, we would GER
| tainly see that it is not only much better,
but that it is also much easier to start
man right than it is to get him right after
| he has gone wrong.
AS a nation Of people, let us get the idea
that every able-bodied man and woman
owes it to himself and to the community
to be a worker, and that it is the positive
! duty Of every one to be student for life.
In proportion as individuals shut them
selves up in their individuality, they shut
out the light, and thereby dwarf the ag
gregate intelligence of the Nation. The
man who o.thinks that because he has grad
uated at some college he knows all that he
needs to know is wofully at fault in his
| Judgment, and the man who makes money
/ getting the sole aim of his life is not only
doing himself wrong, but he is actually
SHINING against the public 1t is true that
the body must have food and raiment and
| it is true, also, that these can only be had
| for price; and that it is every mans duty
to pay the price, but this is not all the truth
| there is connected with mans life exoeri-
ence and destiny. The needs of the body
are but temporary while the needs of the
soul have no end Can man afford to
dwarf his soul to fatten his body? The
paradigms of the school only suggest the
student life to the man who takes high
rank among men. 1t is the everyday
home culture that gives large development
to the soul and makes a man strong, just
as it is the everyday exercise of ones re-
ligion that makes him a good Christian.
BEET SUGAR.
Captain John Boyle Talks to a New