Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1901-02-13
TWENTIETH CENTURY EDUCATION.
That Is the Kind we Need Reasons are Given
Why the South Is Behind the Times. 4

4 That Is the Kind we Need Reasons are Given
Why the South Is Behind the Times.
The South is Synonymous with
opportunity It's theater of gol-
den hopes for ambitious men. The
prizes held out to energy and genius
are larger and more varied in charac-
ter and more readily seized than in
any other part Of the globe. But
we should not blind ourselves to the
fact that in most matters of indus
trial progress we are not keeping
abreast of the spirit of the age.
Our system of education is respon-
sible in part for this condition of
affairs.
The popular idea of the scholar
makes him a pale recluse who spends
his time in the contemplation of
timid generalities. He studies mind
as divorced from man; essence as
divorced from entities; beatitudes as
divorced from bodies. The scholar
is believed to sit on the arid noun
tain-top Of scholasticism, reading the
starry leaves of heaven, feasting on
the sunsets, his soul mellowed and
glori6ed by high thinking and plain
living, but without sympathy for the
Intensely sordid, practical, struggling
humanity down in the fogs of the
valley.
When he condescends to mingle
with the people for season he is
treated as the world treats woman,
for the world believes not SO much
in woman's rights as in the right
woman.
The greatest need of the South
to-day is the scholar IN practical life.
4 We need more twentieth century
education for the twentieth century.
To achieve industrial success two
factors are necessary: Raj
1. The country must have natural
resources.
-. There must be skilled labor to
develop the natural resources.
A statistical array of the resources
of the South reads like a chapter
from the Arabian Nights. There
are Klondykes of wealth in its noun
famous regions, millions of acres of
virgin timber on its plains, inexhausti-
BILE coal beds and iron beds in close
proximity; in short, no other por-
ton of the United States has any
thing like the natural wealth of the
Southern States.
rs IS Why have other less favored Sec
5tions surpassed us in the race for
Industrial supremacy? It is because
we have devoted ourselves exclu-
sively to making and selling raw
products. Such work does not de-
r1and skilled labor or technical train
ing. We have been living by our
muscles, and not by our brains.
Permit me to illustrate: The stu
dents of the textile department. in
Clemson College are learning how to
make fancy weaves.
South Carolina produces annually
100000 bales of cotton, which, at
seven cents pound, is worth $685.
100000.
That crop Of cotton, made into
fancy twills, would bring $8OO,OO0,-
900.
Or made into mercerized cotton
figures would bring $7Oo,OoO,OOO.
Ormade into imitation swivel silks
would bring $80o,0OO,OOO.
Now, why not manufacture our
staple crop into finished goods. The
raw products are close to the mills
we have q conservative laboring ele-
ment; the climatic conditions are
unexce's SO; we have an abundance
of water-power, and the people of
the South have an inherited genius
for managing large enterprises.
One thing is lacking. We need
more education along industrial and
archaeological lines. The main OBJ
jeot Of such training is to apply sol
ence to the material interests of man
The object is to combine knowing
and doing--to teach common sense
In a systematio manner. 1t would
/. not have us take less interest in the
past, but niorein tho living, tllrob-
8bing present 1t would not have us
I lslksss;cw less about the aqueduots oi
Rome, but more about the water
ssupply5o New York.
The census Of 1890 shows tha,
4 1sj5i;; the public sehcol term is org,