The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1872-1911, 1896-07-04
Mistakes In Education.

the country, are making their bows tC
their friends and the public from
Maine to California, naturally Sugges1
the inquiry what is to become OF thi,
army of new seekers after fame anc
fortune, who have just been launched
on the world?
1t will be noticed by the careful OBJ
server that all these young men and
maidens have spent their time pre-
pairing to enter the professions. They
are experts in Latin and Greek, not
carpenter or brick-laying; they favor
the world with valuable dissertations
on ancient history, sociology and dis
puted questions in science, literature,
or art, but are silent to man on how
to build house, how to cultivate a
field, or how to perform some other
mechanical occupation. And yet this
country needs good farmers, good ar
tlSans and good mechanics, far more
then it needs doctors, lawyers or pro-
fessiOnal Inen.
The system of trying to give every
one profession and no one trade is
unnatural, illogical and uupatriotic.
1t is unnatural because it can only be
based on the assumption that all men
and women not only have the same
amount OF brain matter in their
heads, but that it is OF the same kind.
1t ignores entirely the well-known
fact that men differ intellectually as
well as physically, that the best re-
suits can be obtained by developing &
man in the direction in which his na-
tural capacity lies, and not in an en-
tirely opposite direction, and that it is
possible to ruin q very fine mechanic
in an effort to make him even a very
poor lawyer. For the people who
have advanced as far on the road OF
civilization as Americans have it is
passing strange that their system Of
education should be so extremely IL
logical. and that the training of boys
and girls to be good mechanics should
be left to either private benevolence,
like the Troop Institute, or to areform
school like that at Whittier. Yet
that is exactly what is done, not only
here in California but all over the
country.
We are bringing up our boys and
girls to despise labor. We are teach
ing the boys that it degrades them to
soil their hands in an occupation that
gives them living, and our girls that
to cook, or to learn to be a good house
keeper is beneath the boundary line
of respectability. The result is we
launch on the sea of life every year
thousands of boys and girls who have
their living to make, but who are no
more fitted to do il successfully than
if they were expected to utilize the
knowledge acquired in their school to
fly.
For a people protesting Republican
principles aud who in a few days will
celebrate with much to do, and many
professions and speeches the singing
of document that declares that all
men are born free and equal, it is not
astonishing that we should publicly
degrade labor as we do, and put ply
sical labor so far beneath mental.
OF course, we do not pretend to de-
grade it. We refer with pride to the
mechanics and laborers who have been
Presidents and Cabinet officers but as
a matter of fact. the working classes
do not respect their own calling, and
foolishly do all they can to degrade
their own business.
1t is natural to suppose that the
son Of good carpenter would make
better carpenter than be would a
lawyer, or that the child OF parents
who belong to families that have fol-
lowed mechanical occupations for
years would be better mechanic
than lie would be Il clergyman, but
nevertheless, in defiance of all laws OF
heredity the parents try to make a
professional man of their offspring
instead of trying to develop his ma
tural genius for mechanics. Yet Edi-
son is just as great man as Bis
marck, or Peter Cooper as Grant
though III different spheres OF life.
Edison would probably have failed
IN Bismarch's'place, and Grant as a
mechanic was not n success, though
Cooper was' There are cases; and
Grant was one, where the natural
genius of il person does not lie along
the lines of ancestry. but as rule il is
safer to bring up child ia the direc-
ticn in which he is most likely to
have inherited talents than in those
directly opposite. But as matters are
now no effort is made to find the
child's capacity or iucliuations. and =