The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1908-01-03
What Should BE Pursued In Schools.

The men in charge of the great
German Universities are greatly wor-
ried because so many graduates of
German universities can find no field
to work in. This is especially true of
many who have graduated in the So
called learned professions.
1t is doubtless true. For years and
years a great many men have each
spent four years in university and
then spent four times four years in
unlearning much which they receiv-
ed at the school. By unlearning we
mean that what they acquired at the
school can never be of any practical
use to them. Then the next thing is
to find what they really can success
fully undertake. BY this time in
many cases middle life is reached
and their pride is wounded and the
spring has gone out of their energy
and courage. All this proves two
things. One is that not all men can
be benefited by university training;
| the other, that a good many are han
dicapped for life by pursuing the
wrong course of study when in the
school,
The perfect system will come one
of these days. 1t will be something
like this;
Boys will be taken from home
at about sixteen years of age and
put in schools and made to follow
the usual branches and one or two
essential ones which are not taught,
for year Then about sixty per
cent of them will be retained for the
second year. At the close about 60
per cent more will be retained, and
will be allotted to such schools as in
the Judgment Of careful faculty
they should attend. a few will be
advanced to higher scientific schools;
a few more to polytechnic schools;
some will be sent to agricultural col
leges and told to try to emulate Luth-
err Burbank, or to perfect themselves
in the chemistry of soils and in every
calling of agriculture and horticul-
ture. Others will be sent to naval
schools, others to law and medical
schools while others will be permit
ted to make their own selections, be-
cause the shrewdest teachers cannot
decide what is the best path for some
to walk in and climb. What could
any set of experts have made of such
boy as was Mark Twain, or Josh
Billings, or Uncle Remus, when In
school? But how quickly would they
have told Henry Ward Beecher to
study law, and with 1t to consume
history and classics, that he might
present his legal knowledge in the
most perfect form. And how many
a young lady marries John Smith the
farmer, or Peter Jones the artisan,
when three years at conservatory
would have shown that when she
sang the lark would fall out of the
tree in sheer envy, or In her person.
ages she could make dead queens
return to earth and live anew in the
eyes of the watchers. 1t Is SAID the
medical profession Is the most crowd -,
ed in Germany. We're they proper
ly tested in advance? Did not some !,
say to be surgeons, who had coarse:%
ugly and huge hands, and who had
80 little of the mechanical faculty in
their brains that they could not sue
cessfuly tie their own shoes?
And for physicians what kind OF
hearts were theirs in youth? Had
the warm sympathies which patients
would feel in their presence? We're
they conscious enough to watch patti
emily day and night over sick bed
when necessary? Or did they, some
of them choose the profession be-
cause 1t was an honorable one?
Wait until we get our system at
work Goodwin Weekly.