The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-03-30
Education.
We cut the following paragraphs
from the New York Examiner:

"' 1 rejoice, said Mr.. Andrew Carnegie,
on recent occasion, when young men and
women have not wasted their time upon
dead languages, but have been fully occu-
pied in obtaining knowledge of practical
affairs, of shorthand and typewriting,
methods OF farming, banking methods, book
keeping, penmanship, business correspond
ence, business customs, and commercial
law We quote this sentence only to add
in the next breath that il Mr.. Carnegie ex-
poets applause then he must put up with
the hand-clapping of small audience;
small audience even now, and one which it
is pleasure to note is showing signs of
daily becoming smaller"
The Examiner goes on to say:
"Mr Carnegie has set himself, in a sense,
against the pursuit OF intellectual culture,
except in the case of scholars and stu
dents who to his thinking, form a class
apart, class of persons who, without add
ing to the sum of human happiness, or the
material welfare of the world, lead sort of
parasitical existence, taking good deal
more than they give"
Now we have no objection to the old
collie Iiate courses as mental discipline,
and for the small amount of useful
knowledge which the average student
gathers by means of them. For long
time they were the best subjects of
study in existence; and an industrious
pursuit of them gave strength and de-
velopment that could be had in no
other way. The history, the philoso-
ply, the mathematics, and even the
natural science, of Greece and Rome
are still worth studying, and always
will be, though they require for their
full comprehension what knowledge
can be gathered from the records of
anterior civilizations. Greece and Rome
are comparatively new countries. Eu-
rope was once to Asia and Egypt, in
some respects, what America now is to
Europe, and it is we'll worth the schol-
ar's time to begin as far back as he can.
We don't quarrel with what the old
academies and colleges taught, when
they taught all that was known in their
day. What we do quarrel with is their
sticking in the old ways, with eyes
blind to the greater things of the pres
ent aud coming times. We quarrel
also with their methods of teaching
There are no men so far behind in
pedagogics as the great body of our
pedagogues. The average college pro-
fessor knows less about the science and
art of teaching than the average kinder
gartener; and that is not all, nor the
worst,-they, as body, refuse to learn.
We are not personally very much ac-
quainted among the teaching fraternity,
but we would undertake to produce a
man who can teach boy or girl more
and better Latin, or Greek, in year
or both together-than they will get in
the old way in three years at the aver
age academy, and four years more at
the average college. Some twenty
years ago we fell into conversation, on
the cars, with college president, not
knowing at first who or what he was,
and in the talk we put these very facts
to him. All he had to say, when we
told him just what we had learned in a
varied experience with college gradu-
ates, was: {" But what would they have
been if they had not been at college?'
One of the points we made to him, and
which he did not deny, was, that after
three years at the academy and four
years at college, the average graduate
could not sit down and write five-line
epitaph for his fathers tombstone in
either of the classic languages, and be
sure it was correct, without first con
sulting his professor. We were telling
this circumstance only last summer tC
an ex-professor of a Vermont college
and he sarcastically added: " And you
might have said that good many o.
the professors themselves wouldn'
have been any too sure on the subject ,
How long does it take baby to learr
to talk ineligible English, French
German or modern Greek, or any harde
language - say Russian - which i
spoken by those about it? We know
several almost or quite illiterate Amer
leans who have worked a year or so il
the French country of Canada, AM
speak the Canadian patois very well
They could have as well learned Paris
ian French under parallel conditions
When a fellow can't get his Dime
without asking for it intelligibly, hi
will learn pretty quickly how to do il
The instruction heretofore and no,
given in our classical institutions ha
the grand fault of being given in
deathly uninteresting way, paralyzin
to the brain of the pupil, for when
pupil is not interested he does nc
learn. The examinations in both Ems
lish and American schools, when mad