The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1893-06-23

alone, but for the benefit of the community,
and as posterity is dependent upon what he
has seen and recorded, it becomes essential
that he records accurately and wildly the
things seen, heard, felt, done or suffered.
''For centuries the Phenican and Roman
navigators had seen the hulls of vessels dis
appearing below the blue horizon of the
Mediterranean while their sails were Visible,
but they never drew the inference that the
world was round" Lack of power to draw
correct differences retards progress whole
generations or even centuries. The schools
of the future must give more prominence to
this branch of the work. 1t is the patient,
candid, impartial, universal method of
modern science.
The power of expression must come
through practice. Argumentative compost
tion is too little used. Its development
must be made more prominent If we would
properly cultivate the habit of correct
reasoning. Let us turn once more to Presi-
dent EliOts article and read his illustration:
81 was sick; took such medicine; there
fore that medicine cured me-" We might
add that such reasoning is the basis of
patent nostrun testimonials. Again, ''Dur-
ing the civil war the government issued
many millions of paper money, and some
men became very rich; therefore the way to
make all men richer must be to issue from
the government presses an indefinite amount
of paper money. Bessemer steel is much
cheaper than it was twenty years ago; there
has been tariff on steel for the past twenty
years; therefore the tax cheapened the steel.
England, France and Germany are civilized
and prosperous nations; they have enorm-
Gus public debts; therefore public debt is
a public blessing"
Such sophistries are delusion not only
to the uneducated, but to many who are
credited with much learning. 1t results,
in the case of the last mentioned class, from
the simple reason that their education,
though prolonged and elaborate, was still
not of a kind to train their judgment and
reasoning powers.
Our system of education deals too much
from the standpoint of authority, and too
little by direct appeal to the reason. If
teachers could be led to comprehend
that the ability or power to reason properly
is the supreme or ultimate object of all
teaching, great improvement would soon
be wrought in the results of public instruc-
ton.
A catch phrase thrown to the public and
too often tossed about by the unthinking
person is the so called practical education" )"
The sterm implies that its opposite exists,
or impractical education" The latter
term is contradctatory, therefore the first
is wrong and should be deprived of its
adjective.
The word education is derived from a
Latin word which means to train, to rear,
to cultivate, to lead forth, to draw out; there
the pratical is implied in the noun, and the
use of impractical in this connection is an
inpossiblity.
We have but one life to live, and the
education we receive during the most i'm
pressionable period of our lives is tremen-
dously important. 1t is question of such
far reaching influence, so unalterable in its
results, that it should never be considered
carelessly nor decided hastily. "The
choice of an education, like the choice of a
wife, or husband, is for better OF worse"
A catch phrase that captivates the plain
everyday business sense of this practical
age, is an age of so called ''self-made men,"
l lay down this propositions; self-made
man is from necessity and by virtue of what
is implied, failure.
A man may not have been for years in
the schools, so called, but he has been in
contact with nature. His experiences have
been external; consequently, what he is has
not been entirely evolved from the material
of inner consciousness, and thus no one is
'self-made."
Studies are not property that can be esti-
mated or considered like so much real-estate,
to be sold or mortgaged as occasion may
require. Education and money are not
synonymous terms.
A person may say IL you mean to be q
farmer, study agriculture; IL you intend to
engage in buying and selling over the
counter, then study the science Of accounts;
If you would announce doctrines from the
sacred desk, You must confine your researches
within the realms of theology; Everything
else will be so much wasted time" is said to
be the corallary or added proposition to
their definition. A dangerous tendency
with the Students is at every turning point to
raise the question" to what use can l put
this or that study?" One person says 81
spent four years in the study of Greek and
now can not read line of it." An incorrect
inference is drawn that the time he devoted
to this pursuit was so much time thrown
away. President Coulter, of Indiana Uni
versity, says that such statements as well as
those previously made, need to be subjected
to little cold analysis. He considers this
so called practical talk as so much emotional
ignorance that should be turned over to
II lat