Los Angeles herald., 1908-06-08
WORLDWIDE INTEREST
When America Is Grown-Education
BY FREDERIC }. HAsklN

public school endeavors also to train
the hands and strengthen the body.
The teaching of hygiene In the public
schools is already having a tremendous
influence, and in the next ninetx years
It will have worked a transformation
of the habits of everyday life in this
country.
Alcohol is already feeling the blows
being dealt by girl teachers all over
the country. Children are being taught
the precise effect upon the body of the
continuous use of alcoholic stimulants
and 1t is drilled into them that that
effect is wholly bad
The schools likewise teach that much
harm may come from overeating. This
will have it's weight in counteracting
the American tendency toward german
dizing. The American people eat nearly
four times as much per capita as the
people of the rest of the world. We eat
eight times as much meat as the other
nations. and each one of us eats twice
as much sugar as our fathers did in
1860. The cooking schools and the
school hygienists will help to stop this
tendency.
Children will be taught in the kinder
garten that certain laws of nature
must be obeyed If disease and death
become an absolute essential, because
the law will force every child to go to,
school and the school will not let an
unbathed child come in. The schools
Will teach the people that dirt and dis
ease are twins-the people will become
educated and they will be as clean as
possible. Diseases that now scourge
the country will be made practically
harmless and the span of life will be
greatly increased
Public schools advanced along such
lines will lay excellent foundations for
the higher educational institutions.
There will be many great universities
and colleges in the United States nine
ty years from now, but the glory of
the nation will be its technical schools.
Every college man will take a post
graduate course in technics. Special
training will not be confined to lawyers,
doctors, preachers and engineers. The
farmer will not consider himself quail
fled to take his fathers plow handles
until after course in a technical in
stitute. No boy will leave school with
out special knowledge of how to do
some one thing we'll enough to make
his living at 1t. No girl will leave
school without knowledge of the sci
ence and art of cooking and the craft
of housekeeping.
The nation will advance toward
paternalism in educational matters of
which 1t does not dream these days.
The statesmen of the future will recog-
niZe the fact that industrial education
is necessary and that the more widely
distributed the opportunities for ac-
quiring it the better for the nation.
Haphazard ways of doing things will
be abandoned. Already the civil SER
vice is becoming exacting in its de-
mands. Already the technically trained
man is outstripping the academically
trained man. This progress will go on.
There will never be time when a man
whose mind Is well trained in the beau
ties Of the classics will not have an in
tellectual advantage. But In the COM
petition of the future he must also
train his hands to do some useful task
or the world will neglect to note his
existence.
1t hasn't been long since II was be-
lieved that education was not only un-
necessary, but positively harmful for
a farmer! Now the country is begin
ming to awake to the fact that the good
farmer must be a highly educated man.
The college farmers who were sneered
at by the "b'gosh" brigade few years
ago have proved their superiority by
acquiring the lands of the scorners.
Ninety years from now a non-college
farmer will be as rare as a non-college
physician today.
Ten boys are in technical schools to-
day where there was one twenty years
ago. Ten girls are in domestic science
schools today where there was one
being increased rapidly and the next
generation will expect every child in
the country to be trained from the kim
dergarten up. The high school gradu-
ates generation hence will be required
to furnish other proof of their fitness
for diploma than the mere passing
of a written examination. The boys
must present concrete exhibition of
skilled handiwork. The girl must be
dressed in a gown OF her own making.
When the United States reaches its
estate of full grown manhood, and 1t
has 3S5,00O,OO0 people predicted for the
end of the century. there will be new
| responsibilities for the community, new
burdens on the individual. The broad
ened sphere of national activity will
demand a higher standard of citizen
ship. Every man will be expected to
do his part toward exalting the life of
the nation. 1t is fortunate that the
tendencies of the educational forces in
the country are such as to produce just
that kind of a nation and that kind of
| citizens
| The American educator of the year
| 1000 will aim at the maximum develop
ment Of the powers of every man. If
| he has five talents, or two talents, or
one talent-let them be fully developed.
But no man will be permitted to hide
| his talent in napkin and bury 1t from
sight.
Copyright 1908. by Frederic ]. Haskln.)
Applied Science.