Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1896-06-12


tective value, both to society and to the in
dividual. 1t is doing great deal toward
relieving society of the tremendous bur-
! den of the incompetent. We ought not to
expect that society can ever be relieved en-
| tirely of this burden, for its requirements
are growing so much more eXactng. There
are fewer and fewer things for people to do,
| who cannot do some one thing well. So
ciety is outgrowing the incompetent. In
teligence must be served by intelligence.
The education therefore, which makes men
more competent breaks up the dull mass,
which as a mass always falls to the bottom.
The great need in good many kinds of
business is not more industry, more hard
work, but more of the Yankee quality of
Calculation" No New England farmer,
for example, can work hard enough to
make farming pay. 1t is just as necessary
for him to study the markets as it is for
him to till the fields. Study changes the
character of occupations. The infusion of
any real intelligence into an occupation
changes in time, its grade, or lifts the
workman into another condition. Com
potency, the power to do thing well, is
the great industrial virtue.
2. Another value which ought to be
credited in larger degree to the principle of
utility in education is the commercial
value. This value is one legitimate out
come of the schools. II is entirely proper
to transmute knowledge into dollars and
cents. knowledge as it is clear, and exact,
and rare will have market value There
should be no separation between education
and life in its most necessary and human
activities. | confess to growing respect
for the man who knows how to earn his
| ltin nd ytshp hot lie
shall know how TO earn their living.
OF course in estimating the wealth of
nations no exact account of debit and
credit can be opened with science. But
the broad fact appears that national wealth
now starts out of sources quite different
from those which gave the extraordinary
development of the last century. The
wealth of England which enabled the ma
tion TO carry on the wars with Napoleon
did not come out of Oxford and Cambridge.
The names of the great inventors, Watt,
Hargraves, Arkwright, and their compeers
do not appear on the rolls of the universe
ties, though Watt gained some incidental
advantage from the professors in Glasgow
college. Inventors of that date were for
the most part practical workmen, expert
mentng as they worked. Today the i'm
pulse which gives the advance along every
!
from the schools. We look to the schools
for it. When the engineer of the proposed
bridge over the North river at New York
says that the span which the bridge is to
carry could not have been built, hardly
conceived, at the time the Brooklyn bridge
was planned, it simply means that there
has been corresponding increase within
that time of mathematical knowledge, the
higher mathematics. Pasteur referred to
the work which Germany was doing in
the advancement of great laboratories in
connection with her universities. One
practical result of that comes in the pres
ent position which Germany takes in the
department of commercial chemistry, sup
plying chemists without number for for
eign manufactures.
l The great example, however, is Pasteur' S
, own work in biological science, the practi-
cal fruits of which were seen in the silk in
dustry of France, and in the preservation
of horses and cattle through incubation.
Huxley calculates that his experiments
added directly to the wealth of France
l more than the cost OF the Franco German
J war.
r 3. / am disposed to go beyond the
/ values which | have named, the protective
and commercial values and assign a certain
moral value to utility. The claim is made
for the technical school, in distinction from
the college, that there is more purpose on
the part of its students, more enforced at
tention to study, more earnestness II moi
; enthusiasm in work; in a word that the
morality which lies In mental discipline i:
higher in the school than in the college.
= am not sure that there is not a certain
amount of truth in this claim. Fewer stu
{ dents probably are sent to schools of tech
e nology than TO colleges. The practical ain
4 is more constantly present in the daily
i task. The curriculum is set 10 faster time
The social element is largely ignored or un
: developed. Dormitory life is the exception
Il not the rule. Athletics take a secondary
e place.
Il The whole business object is made more
distinct, and exists as a larger motive force
Out of this situation a certain result il
: gained which may be fairly said to have
! moral significance. l acknowledge tn,
! morality of attending to ones business. .
e So much for values
) l think that have given full value t
{ the principle of utility.
l pass now to the limit, which it Seems
/ to me ought to be put upon the principle
> of utility as determining factor in moderI
II education.
II And in the first place wish to protes
e against any territorial division of the sub
u ject-matter of education through the in
( PRODUCTION of this principle. Because som
u subjects can be used to the end of utilit,
= as others cannot be, deny the right to APP
e propriate these subjects to that end exclu
Is sively. The principle of utility, if left Il
) itself, says to the student of today, "If yol
, want culture, go back into the old educa
II ton; that is your territory; but if yol
/ want success take the new that is the feel,
= for men who are to live in the life of to
e day."
Il 1t is not the contempt for the old which
. is implied in this attitude of which hav
u anything to say. The old education i
&c abundantly able to maintain itself whel
properly adjusted to its surroundings. NJ
y contention is against the assumption tina
y the subject-matter of the new education
IL altogether for the end of utility. l affirm
l. its higher uses. l put it on a growin
\ equality with the old in nearly all that con
&c stitutes the training of an educated man
l can no more conceive of an educate
0t man of today as devoid of the scientih
y spirit, or ignorant of the methods and re
( suits of the natural and physical sciences
l, than l can conceive of him as devoid of tn
Ot spirit of the common humanity, or ignoran
'e of the great historic forces which have bee
is at work in the life of men and of nations.
L put a second limit on the principle o
utility as it is at work in the field of educa
II ton, in its abridgment through prematur