Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1899-11-10

natural feeling TO have mile posts placed
along the way and to the fact acknowledge
ed a given number of these posts.
In the use of public library by the peo-
pie as a whole Mr.. Dewey saw the greatest
sphere of usefulness in the travelling libra
ry, meaning that system so successfully
used in some of the western states under
which sections or cases of books are sent
out from library centres to rural commune
ties and remote neighborhoods, thus carry
ing public library to the people instead of
requiring the people to come into the Ii
brary.
President Tucker of Dartmouth college
was the speaker Friday evening" and his
subject was 1.-THE Rights of the Period of
Education" In opening he spoke of
Thomas Hughes, who had been called
''the most distinguished school boy who
ever lived" What Thomas Arnold was
among masters, that Thomas Hughes was
among school boys, or undergraduates.
Without Thomas Hughes the work of
Thomas Arnold would have passed away
with his generation. 1t would have been
a personal and local work.
Thomas Hughes caught the ideal of the
great master, and translated it into fact, as
school boy at Rugby, as undergraduate
at Oxford, and finally into the young life
of England wherever it was in training.
That ideal was 50 signal that it could be
apprehended by anyone, and so true and
fine that once understood it became con-
tagious. 1t was simply the assertion of
the natural, the genuine, the manly as
against the conventional, the artificial,
the unnatural, if not the unmanly. The
change broke up the old conventional re-
latioas between master and scholar. 1t
substituted character for mere authority,
attainment for dogmatism, on the part of
the master, and honor and loyalty in
place of fear or evasion on the part of the
scholar.
The speaker emphasized the fact that
this change was made possible through the
awakened consciousness of the school boy
himself. AS soon as he saw that the world
in which he was living was really his world,
having its own rights, and pleasures and
opportunities and responsibilities, he be-
came interested in it, and interested in
trying to make it the right kind of a
world.
Turning to his subject President Tucker
said he believed he attached too little i'm
portance to the period of education and TO
those whose life belongs within that pc
riod.
He urged that we must have separate
ness or distinctness to ensure unity, If we
are to get the value out of any period OF
our lives. The period of education is no
exception to this rule. He urged the right
of this period to as distinct and separate
a place as may be necessary to secure its
essential objects without interference, its
right to create a sentiment, spirit, an at
mosphere of its own, and its right to lay
claim to time without the charge of intru-
sion.
The object of education Is to enable the
individual to fud himself, and second, to
enable to make sure of himself These
are simple aims, but they are very far
reaching. One remains essentially child
until he begins at least to know himself,
and one does not reach to any height of
manhood until his powers have begun TO
work with some degree of certainty.
acknowledged and self-relance are the
first plain, everyday, practical results of
educaLion-the self-knowledge which
comes from awakened faculties the self
reliance which comes from trained facul-
ties. This is the responsibility resting
upon the schools and colleges. Beyond
this is the vast range of information open
only to the few-the few who have com
mitted themselves to the high ends of re-
search and discovery.
Now if such responsibility as this falls
within the period of education there ought
to be in the public mind corresponding
distinctness of objects attaching to the pc
riOd. 1t is just as distinct an object to or
ganize the mind of a generation as it is to
employ that mind afterward in any given
trade of business or profession. A well
organized mind is as distinct an object as
character, and as worthy an end as a for
tune. Education is the outfit to which one
is entitled, the capital with which one
ought to be able to begin the battle of
life.
The speaker pleaded for the extension
of the period of education to 81 years, and
answered convincingly the objections to
such pan-the cost, the withdrawal of a
large number from productive labor, and
the claim that education units for common
work.
The speaker believed that the extension
of the period of education would invigorate
the whole school system. One of the fail
ures of education lies in the fact that it
does not carry education far enough along
to feel its social effect. The common
school is democratic institution the high
er 1t reaches. The average college is the
most democratic institution in American
Jociety-mOre of social democracy than
the average church.
Aud when you pass to the influence of
the upper grades upon the individual you
ind that the influence stimulates In pro-
portion 70 the degree In which one feels
that he Is a part-a necessary part-of the
school, That Is what membership In q