The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-10-06
WHAT Is EDUcAr1oHi

| plncnlng themselves ana making all
sorts of self -denials in getting togeth-
er the wherewithal to send their
children to boarding schools and col
leges, is suitable time to consider
what the thing is that we call ''high-
er education 7" What is it doing
for the country? In short, is it
worth what it costs?
In the earlier days of this country
the farmers were not troubled much
about the education of their children.
It was then an unheard of thing to
mortgage the farm or deprive them
selves of good food and clothing for
the sake of sending the boys and
girls away from home to be educated.
Parents had not been bred in the
colleges themselves, and clung to the
ways of their ancestors with more de-
votion and filial affection than is ap-
parent nowadays; and generation
after generation would often occupy
the farms. When the parents be-
came old and feeble there were chill
dren about to care for them and
when they died there was a trained
son or son-in law ready to take pos
session of the old homestead and
prize the legacy.
Such boys were not like the young
man I know, who has just inherited
a large farm and is sorely grieved
lest he can not get enough out of it
to keep it in repair.
The old-time farmers were indis-
pensable factors in making this coun-
try the pride of the world, and a
place where industry and thrift could
Prosper.
But these people were not educa-
ted, We are told-their bad grammar,
unadorned dress, and husband milk
diet would not do in this day. The
modern farmer must keep abreast of
the times, and SO he sends his chill
dren away from home to study things
that are entirely foreign to the occu-
patton of agriculture. In colleee life
they meet with attractive people and
by the time they have been graduated
many of them are ashamed Of the old
homely ways and home people, and
herhaps want to flee away from the
farms and continue the more expen-
sive and less laborious ways of the
'scultured world" 1t is plain case
that colleges have been in certain
sense, hindrance to husbandry.
We sometimes say that the old
prosperous farmers who raised their
families (mostly large ones) in COM
fort and plenty, and who laid by
abundance for rainy day, were not
educated" What is education ?
If the man who knows the ins and
outs of his business (and can conduct
it so that it puts money in his pocket
and plenty in his home, and makes
him an honored man in the commu-
nifty well, if he is not an educated
man, maybe he has something that
is better than is found in the frolick-
ing schools of today.
A gifted writer said that by the
term education he meant the sac
quisition of true common sense" I
like his definition. "The education"
said he, (which leads to success may
have little of the classics and may
lack what the fashionable world calls
culture" Education appears to de-
pend on the standpoint from which
we view it. A preacher in Boston
said of the sage of Concord, that
Emerson would have been greater
man if he had only had better edu-
cation" And a guide in the Adiron-
dacks said that James Russell Lowell
was the ''most ignorant man whom
he had ever met"
1t will not do to imagine because
we happen to know a few things
which our neighbor does not know,
that we are his superior in knowledge.
He might be able to tell US many
things we had not dreamed of. The
woman who cooks our dinners could
often give points in domestic economy
not known by the graduates of the
schools. 1 esteem that person the
best educated who is thoroughly in
formed along the line of his occupa-
ton, and who is making the best use
of his attainments for the good of
mankind as we'll as himself. This
sort of learning enables a person to
earn his own living-a most desirable
consummation.
The chief manufacturing, as well
as the agricultural, interests of the
world were begun by poor men. 1t
is not the collegebred men who nave
done the greatest things in this coun-
try; it is the self-educated men.
Why?
The poor young man must work or
starve. II he is worthy, and wants
to be useful to his fellow men, he
will keenly feel the necessity of
knowledge to help him along. He
will not only want to know all that
he can possibly learn about bis voca-
ton, but will feel the need of gener-
al intelligence; and so he proceeds
at all spare intervals of labor to study
what he needs to learn. He never
goes through the farce of graduating
and quitting, but keeps at it through
life.
There are numberless examples of
that sort. It is written of Peter
Cooper that if he had been "rich
enough to go to school, he might
have grown up as ignorant as some
of our university graduates. He
worked nights and wore old clothes
and had an absolute horror of debt.
He would not begin business on
borrowed capital, which his employ
er freely offered him. He would not
get in debt to any person. No purer
or more influential man lived than
Peter Cooper. He was most excel
lent example to others.
George Peabody was another illus
trious specimen of self-made man.
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