The Portland daily press., 1895-07-09
TEACHERS HERE.
Continued From First Page.


en- echo. quote from somewhat recent
issue of the London Saturday Review an
article entitled ''The Curse of Educa-
tion." ["
sEver since the enormous enlargement
numerically of the English universities,
there can be little doubt that the value
of degree has gone down commercially.
The number of first class men seeking
work and finding none is sorry com :
ment on the development of the English
university system. If this is true of the
first class, what must be the lot of the
second, the third and the pass man? The
learned professions in fact are over
crowded. The cause of this unhappy
crowding of the market for brain workers
is not far to seek.
s'An immense number of persons who
in foIaer times would have worked will
their hands, as their fathers did before
them, are being educated to work with
their heads There is a general leveling
up of the social grades If you look at 1T
enthusiastically The son of the artisan
becomes. a clerk, the son of clerk as
pires to teach a school, the son of school
teacher aspires to go to Oxford or Cam
bridge; but this leyeling up is not an un-
mixed blessing. The result is that we
have 80 times too many clerks-200 ap-
piled for an insignif can't post advertised
the other day-ten times too many half
educated teachers, and alas ten times
too many university graduates turned out
every year to crowd the ranks of the bar,
the sch ools and journalism and recruit
the years crop OF miserable and hopeless
failures. None of these people can dig as
their fathers did. They cannot make shop
boys or busmen or crossing sweeepers
Too many of them can only teach or
starve. 1t is really impossible to deny
that a certain degree of intellectual edn-
cation units a man to work with MS
hands and earn his bread as laborer.
1t may be that it ought not to do SO, but
, in the present imperfect state of the world
SO 1t is. Therefore somehow or other,
places must be found for this enormous
harvest of tolerable scholars.
ThiskWould be disheartening ii no solu-
ton to the difficulty could be found, but
the problem of education has recently
been brought to the test of critical study
more directly than ever before; and the
demand now is for an education OF the
whole man; the proper training OF every
faculty which God has given him.
Whether however, public education ought
to be carried beyond the point attained by
the present Grammar school; or, perhaps
to be better understood, whether the
State should attempt to furnish more than
a good common school education, leaving
those who desire to pursue more advanced
courses of study to seek the Academy or
College fitting school, is questionsyet to
be settled, and one which demands the
consideration of our best educators.
When Bacon uttered the aphorism
which has been quoted, the education OF
the masses was doubtless far from his
thought, in fact, anyone who had sug-
gested popular education as means OF
relief from the dismal condition of affairs
then exsting, would have been forthwith
fitted to a straight Jacket or something
worse. 1t required virgin soil in which
to root popular education, and Proyi-
dence, in the fullness of time, provided
both the soil and the men competent to
plant and nurture it. No men but the
founders of New England could have un-
dertaken the novel task with any hope OF
success, and no unprejudiced mind cal
regard them as other than men of re
markable wisdom and virtue Ameri
cans should always holdiinireverence thest
men; In the weary days and nights
when the ships, which bore them and Sc
much they held dear were pursuing an
almost unknown pathway to the new
world, they were cogitating methods of
Republic building, and one of the corner
stones of thefabric which they beheld il
visfen, was the public school. AS soor
as possible, naysealmost sooner than ii
dsheartening obstacles which surrounded
them, these heroic and self sacrificing
men began to put plumb and level to this
indispensable support to the future re
public. OF course they wrought better
than they knew. All men who work on
the lines SO dimly discernable to human
vision, which Providence has marked out
always build better than they know; new
ertheless, to them belongs the honol
which is due to the worlds greatest bene
factors. HaInpered as they were by pov
eFty, and exposed to constant danger o.
attack from the savage tribes which sur
rouded them, the school which they labo
riously set up in the wilderness was nee
essarily bare of conveniences, and thu
course of study simple in the extreme
reading, writing, some arithmetic and
geography, and spice of grammar, was
about all. They fully believed in some
religious training, hence the use of the
New England primer, which informed
the pupil that in Adams fall we sinned
all, y. that !. Xerxes the great did die
and SO must you and l, and other sim
liar facts.
The greater portion of the education O.
the children of these men was acquired
in the school of experience, and they
grew up to the full stature of self reliant
manhood hence. we in this country have
not been disturbed with.wailss from the
public press like this which have quoted
from our London contemporary. We
might, however, in time have reached
similar condition. but fortunately, as
have before said, our public educators
have.discovered that intellectual education
alone is not an equipment with which al
can successfully meet those obtacles
which SO many are called upon to encoun
ter, and have decreed that true system
of education must provide for the educa
tion of the whole man hence, our Ameri
can educators have adopted the Kinder
garten, the Manual Training School ant
various methods of technical instruction
What America wants are whole men
men with brains, and hearts and hands
trained to efficient service. This is tn,
creed, which the American Institute O