The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-06-04
THINGS EDUCATION DOES.


The remedy long accepted by the American public
for the chief evils, social and political, which may
confront the republic presently in the future is
that of universal education. We have been taught
throughout for half century to believe that
with our electorate educated up to an intelligent I'M
Outstanding of its duties toward free and honest gov
eminent will have solved the great problem Of
prolonged national existence.
Acting this view popular education has
ceiyed an impetus among which is phenomenal
Our free schools offer to the children Of all classes Of
the people every facility that the state can devise
to avail themselves Of school education In all its
branches. The thousands Of young and women
which our higher institutions of learning turn
ing out in these closing days of school exercises
test the general that is had the oppor-
tunites thus afforded.
There are many problems growing out Of this
universal resort to education which cannot continue
to be ignored. One of the problems is whether the
prevailing education by the state is not creating a
spirit of pessimism and unbelief among our more
intelligent classes. The educated Of society
having very little to do with public concerns.
They cannot be relied on to concern themselves to
any extent ia the remedying Of public evils. In the
direction Of religion too there is really but little il
any, thought bestowed by educated classes. The
mass of the people remain aloof from the churches
The average educated man in professional bust
III
religion its teachings. He usually confines himself
to seeing that his wife and children keep up the
church connection. But for himself. he has mat
tiers of greater gravity to him. and when at
lacks are made in attractive form religious beefs
he not infrequently finds himself sympathizing with
them. Our educational system leads away from the
church and church influence, and the effect is visible
in the state of religious unrest if not indifference
which prevails generally. The proclamation Of Gov.
-II,
Gently pointed out that in Ills state men and women
born and married and went to their graves
without the Intervention of the church in any d.
rection, shows the gravity of this disposition among
those OF our people who have had the amplest OBJ
portunities of education placed at their disposal.
Coils p. Huntington recently declared that our
educational system failure in its operation to
prepare children for those pursuits in life that
they are not fitted for, and to them from those
to which they best adapted This is not the least
OF the evils which are showing themselves in Ameri-
can society. Young men and women are crowding
into offices Clerical employments overerowded
and growing every day Within day or two
sixty or seventy new lawyers were created in this
city where numbers Of the ablest lawyers at the bar
are in desperate straits to get living Recently
Mrs Rebecca Harding Davis, of our most acute
students of sociological questions one of our mos,
entertaining writer's related her experience in a New
The whaling Industry dead In x now and so
are the old seamen who followed it. The generations
that succeeded them have not found industry to
take its place. The swamps undrained the
felds untitled the fish disport bv millions
In the bay undisturbed. The people in the village
keep themselves and their children alive by renting
put one ambitionto be educated their feeble energy
finds its only outlet in academy college course
Nothing could be more laudabe according ordinary
pubic opinion. Visitors look with at the three
huge school houses and the library which tower
the village houses until they that there
is not cobber tailor druggist a
whether book learning is the wholesome and need
full thing in the life of community.
This is fancy sketch. It sustains the
criticism that with the head is being educated at
the expense of the hand and the heart Its effect too
is to establish false social standards The democratic
idea. which the grandest distinction Of Ameri-
canism. is disappearing He who goes through life
without soiling his hands too often looks down on
him who makes a good living at manual labor We
have lawyers and doctors to burn; clerks book
Keepers spectators, and those generally in pursuit.
OF the lighter caings by the hundred where one
would Go all the work of the world of the kind that
can be proftaby done. IN a word, there is danger
that by our making fetch of popular education we
have brought our young and women to believe
that they better than their fathers because they
are better dressed think they better educated and
have decidedly better time