The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-06-02
TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP.


Massachusetts, is considered the prig
of the Union by many of her sister
states, but with all her priggishness
she has been a weIspring of political
ideas and ideals. To borrow an illus
tration from the agricultural interests,
she has been more or less of a politi-
cal experiment stadon. And the eoun-
try has profited by her experiments.
There is in the state Society for the
Promotion of Good Citizenship. and
one of its ways of promoting good citi-
zenship is by holding conferences. At
one held in Boston last week Professor
Edwin A. Start, president of the New
England History Teachers association,
was a speaker. He said, in part:
"Our methods of education have
failed OF preparing men for the real
work Of life, and the only place to look
for the remedy is in che study of the
history Of man and mis- social relations.
This is the one essential at the basis
of everything. One might as well try
to build house without a frame or
foundations as to build citizenship
without an understanding of the his
tory Of nations and of men.
THE great faults of our present
methods of education along this line
are inertia, dead weight conservatism
that never learns anything, and never
forgets anything; and rampant radi-
calism, that seizes upon every new
panacea that is pushed forward guar
anteed to cure all the ills the social
body is heir to.
THE time is come when dry husks
should no longer be offered to children
in the place of the facts of the growth
and development of society"
There is much TO cause reflection in
this, and while it deserves considera-
ton and respect. it seems to overlook
a very essential if not vital matter. 1t
is that education is merely a prepara-
tfon and nothing more. So devoted
have the American people become TO
their education cult that they have
come to believe that in education lies
the remedy for all ills. No system of
education can be made to serve as a
panacea for the evils incidental to af-
fairs, governmental or other. What !
the devotees of education fail to realize /
is that human nature cannot be made |
over again by any process. Much of
the failure of education is due TO the !
very fact that more is expected of it /
than it can possibly give. In the great (
world with its struggles and problems. /
its competition and failures. no educa- 4
ton can be made to supplant expert
ence. Much of our education is very
impractical in that it fails to give an
adequate or any idea of the actual con-
ditions that surround the struggle for
existence; and after all, that is what
life is. 1t is the realization of these
conditions that explains the success of
the poor boy in college and after he
graduates where. the boy in easier cir
SO often fails No system
If education can supply the Unborn
qualities of push and perseverance A
fault of our common school
system is that there is too much en-
leavor to conform pupils to it rather
han it to the pupils.
Valuable as the study of history is.
10Th for educational and citizenship
~ PDot7s X IL AAel4 QiS 81 NdlQd1lt dS .
Professor Start holds. History is not
llways truth, that is, the whole truth.
Until within a comparatively short
ime history has busted itself chiefly ;
With the doings of kings and queens
nd the chronicling of pageants and
oval progresses. of battles and. the !
Ike. This was largely inevitable be-
ause the people were no more factors {
n the affairs of government than were ;
he cattle in the fields.
Education is not good citizenship be- {
lg at best but one of many means of {
tanning it, Good citizenship consists 7
lore in right-doing than in right {
and While right thinking +
sually precedes right-doing, it is not :
ways followed by it. we must get l
ction."