The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-08-30
DISTORTED EDCCATTON.

There is widespread impression
among students of sociological ques-
tons that the public school system is
falling short of its mission. AS a tree
is known by the fruits, so also must
we judge of any educational system by
its results. The faulty character of the
results of popular education is not in
herent in the principle, but due rather
to defective application of a false
standard. The criticism that comes with
greatest force in this connection is the
assertion that we educate the head at
the expense of the hand and heart.
The high schools of the country turn
out an army of graduates annually,
boys and girls whose practical ideas
of life and it's responsibilities have yet
to be formed We find this army i'm
bued with an almost universal senti-
ment that the professional fields of law,
medicine or similar vocations are open
for their occupation. This certainly is
an error 1t is fact patent to any
who cares to investigate, that these lines
are overcrowded and only a few may
succeed where hundreds fail
The machine process of development
lis fault of the system. The boy with
/ little or no natural bent or aptness for
a literary or professional calling gets
the same educational diet that is given
to another whose natural tendencies
are all in this line. The former, with
proper training, might become a good
artisan and a valuable member of So
ciety, but with faulty conception of
his proper niche in society's structure
the chances are largely in favor of his
adding one more to the long list of fail
ures. 1t is the specialist who succeeds
now. Mediocrity is not at premium
1t should be the province of popular
Education to guide the child into such a
path as will lead him to a field of use
fulness, whether this leads him to the
shop, the pulpit or the counting room.
II the pedagogue of the future is to
meet the requirements of the public in
/ the field of popular education, he will
devote more of his professional train
ing to a study Of the child as an in
dividual. Without an ability to under
stand child nature, he becomes a "blind
leader of the blind" and under the
present system necessarily prepares
many of his pupils for pursuits en-
tirely untitled for them. Mrs. Rebecca
Harding Davis, relating her observa-
tons in New England community,
says:
THE whaling industry is dead in *
now, and so are the old seamen who fol-
! lowed 1t. The generations that succeeded
them have not found any industry to take
| It's place. The swamps remain underlined
| the fields untitled, the fish disport them.
| selves by millions in the bay undisturbed
| The old people in the village keep them.
selves and their children alive by renting
| their houses to summer boarders But the
| children have but one ambiton-to be ed.
ucated their feeble energy finds its only
| outlet In an academy and college course
| Nothing could be more laudable, accord
| ing to ordinary public opinion. Visitors
| look with awe at the three huge school
houses and the free library, which tower
! over the village houses, until they dis.
| cover that there is not a cobbier or a tai
| Tor or a druggist or skilled mechanic in
| the village. Then they begin to wonder
whether book learning is the only whole.
| some and needful thing in the life Of a
| community"