The Arizona sentinel., 1897-02-27
YUMA, ARIZONA SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1897
Is Our Education 8 Failure!

The question may be asked in al
 seriousness, provoked by more thar
 one current or recent incident. l
 our education a failure? A great issu
 of national policy is brought to th
 fore. It demands consideration o
 political economy, history, industria
 statistics, present condition in al
 parts of the world, and what not. Il is an issue, one would say to the de
 termination of which the most thor ough knowledge of such topics shopll
 be summoned. But a man a college
 bred man, declares that the most ill.t crate and ignorant is as competent to deal withi as the most highly educated. Again, industrial evils widespread, afflict the laRd. Bushes, IS prostrate. Men are idle, penniiess
 Vast discomfort prevails. And a col lege-bred man says it is because the masses of the people are too highly educated. They are educated above their station, and thus made discon- tented. They should remain ignorant, as it is fitting that hewers of wood and drawers of water should be- Are these men right? If so, the question first asked may readily be answered. Education Is a failure. Schools and colleges are ghastly mockeries. Ifthe one be right, "the dream, the fancy" of the poet are real. The squalid say age is the tEuest type of manhood. In his condition is not only more joy but more profit that Gin this march of mind." Or if the other be right, and education be fitted only for the fay ored few, then is the republic itself a failure, and a tyrannical oligarchy is the best form of government?
 But they are not right. Humanity revolts at the very thought. "KnOw- ledge is power" as the old cSpy-book legen!s use to tell, and it is a power of universal benefcence, if only 1t be properly employed. "The practiced hustings liar" may tell his audiences ignorance Is as competent as is wis dom to deal with great questions of science and of statecraft, but they know, and he knows in his heart too, that lie lies. There is no rational farmer in the land who does not seek the superior knowledge of physidian when he Is i'll, or even when his horse or COW Is i'll. What wretched twad- dle, then, to say no expert knowledge is required to heal the ailments of the body polite! Those who have done this latter have invariably been men of knowledge. The founders of the republic-Washington, Hamilton, lief ferson, Madison and their colleagues- were scholars, every one of them, given to much reading and to diligent study
 So were the men who saved the na- tion from disruption generation ago. Now and then an unlettered genius flashes upon the world and illumines it with meteoric luster. But the con- stant radiance that makes life bright and progress possible comes from men of true learning, who are men of ac- tion, but also men of thought.
 Nor is the other theory more tenable, that learning should be denied the many and granted only to the few. The truth is that which John Morley has elOquently expressed: "Not only the well-being of the many, but the chances of exceptional genius, moral or intellectual in the gifted few, arc highest in society where the average interests, curiosity, capacity, are all highest" Nothing could be more apt or more significant The whole great world scheme of evolution requires its truth. There is no general who would not prefer an army of intelligent men to an army of blockheads. What is essential is, of course, that they be ed ucated in the right way. A soldier educated only as an artist or as a chemist would be of little service. If collegiate and other education fail of benchcence it Is not because 1t is edu cation, but because it ;s .G | tbs right kiad of education II the ''scholar in politics" be failure, 1t Is because he IS merely d scholar in politics &nd not a schola, of politics; because, that is to say, his education is deficient in re- sp~ct to the one thing he IS trying to practice. So would the scholar Ee a failure in law, medicine, sci nee. and hat not, ii hi scholarship failed to comprise the very thing he was en- gateI in It is not true th1t liberal eduration spo:lS a farmers son for uE-s-zS--z-z-z- S-