The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1907-09-05
PRACTICAL EDUCATION.
PLEA FOR THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL
E. NJ. HEAGAN.

fallen to too great an extent into the
hands of professional schoolmen, who
from the very nature of their training
and vocation live apart from the activi-
ties and demands of the average life
and are entirely out of sympathy with
its necessities.
Another solemn truth is-and no less
a parsonage than Herbert Spencer says
so-that ornament and not utility has
been in the past the object of formal
teaching in the higher secondary schools.
In the Essay on Education, a book every
father and mother ought to read, he
makes apparent the absurdity of such
a system of education, and cynically
adds that person trained after this
fashion bushes if caught accenting
Iphigenia on the wrong syllable, but is
satisfied TO remain densely ignorant of
the human body.
Because we live in a democracy, a
government theoretically of, by and for
the people, it is considered highly un-
democratic, even offensive, to speak of
the rich or of the poor or of a middle
class, yet, nevertheless, such classes do
exist whether we will or no; and the
recrudesence of a hydra headed feudal-
ism that has Knocked at freedom for
ages is with advancing time making
class distinctions in America more and
more apparent, so that for the purposes
of this discussion there are simply the
rich and the poor.
1t is obvious then that education such
as is called unessential by Spencer,giv
in the average public higher schools,
cannot serve the purposes of both rich
and poor alike, for the children of the
rich are not in need of that special
technical knowledge which fits or tends
to fit for some definite trade or calling
The children of the poor, however, COM
PEELED by necessity to earn their bread
and butter as early in life as they pos
sibly are able, can more proftably to
themselves and to the community in
which they are to dwell spend what
little time they have for higher educa-
ton on subjects that shall tend to train
them for their life work.
Now inasmuch as we are living, theo-
retically at least, under democratic
form Of government, should not the
public higher schools attempt to train
the supposedly ruling majority, the
average citizens, for their life work
rather than to give them an ornamen-
tai or cultural education, which is in
reality intended and fitted for the scat
tering rich alone.
The truth seems to be that the pro,
fessional schoolmen, intellectual de-
scendants of the moEastic educators of
the middle ages, have been aping the
education of the rich, and they have
foisted on the public a system of edu-
cation with which it is not in sympathy
and for which it has little use; yet be-
cause this public did not and does not
have the courage of its convictions the
system has prevailed up to within com
paratiyely recent times, and is unfortu
nately still in force in many commune
tias
10 Train lhe average youth IN such
ornamental branches, unessential for
him, is crime, for it is educating him
awav from what mnst inevitably he his
life work. That such tendencies are
prevalent has been noted nv distin.
onished men like President Roosevelt
and Fnnarar William If Germany Tn
his nassaoa of Decombor lone tho
President Savs !, mart
..1t shon1d no ono of or, rrirno oh
iects as a nation, so far as feasible. con.
stantly to work toward putting the
Win his hands On hichor nj.no of
atticiamrv and revard 60 &c 70 f inore. 90
his Effectiveness in the economic world
and fine dionitv tho remnnaration and
fhe nower of Lis nosition in tho social
Nortd I7nfortnnatelv at nresent tba
effect Of some of the work in The nnh.
lie cchooIs 10 in Tho ayootlv onnoSito
rlirection IF hove and airls aro fraina S
snepe11, -, l;+aror ooo511I;shnntt ~
40 araI,,s;ay oe .oa,t,a1 ;,lS,.s.,; w
or teot,l;onI troi1;,,n 4hn tonan, u "a 20
81 eoSul4lSdi lldlnliS, tilC tcuueuCy Is W