The Norfolk weekly news-journal. (Norfolk, Neb.) 1900-19??, 1908-02-21
A GREAT STEP FORWARD.

|
different and. diverse directions tina
there has arisen during the past few
years an increasing demand that the
American boy be given a better fight
ing chance" in the worlds broad field
of battle in the bivouac of life"
1t is a lamentable fact that while as
a people we have been contending foi
equality and justice and liberty of ac
ton in our political life, in education
al matters, we seem to have been al
most totally blinded both as parents
and as teachers, to giving these same
principles any practical bearing when
| it came to the rising generation.
The plain truth is that our whole
school system has been built up and
sustained on the theory that the full
high school course and this followed
by a college course was the natural
expectation and resultant of every
boy and girls education.
Practically, we know how this has
worked. 1t has given the occasional
boy and few more of the girls the
chance to fit themselves for teaching
or some professional life and utterly
ignored the situation which the av.
erage boy or girl has to meet.
1t is one of the most Ubiquitous and
serious injustices of the times. 1t has,
it is true, built up great institutions
of learning, but it has failed ignomin-
iously in helping to make the path
way of the many easier or their foot
ing more sure. 1t is a strange situa-
ton that at the same time the people
and their strenuous leaders have been
arraigning in the most scathing terms
"the system" in the financial world
because it has by combination and
greed, thrown the prizes of CONNER
cial success into the hands of the few,
the people themselves through 1.-The
System" of state and national educa-
ton have been forging chains of linn
itation for the next generation fasci-
mated by the splendid edifice they
were rearing in higher education" as
shown by the magnificent and colossal
amounts of money expended so freely
in colleges, universities and high
schools for the benefit of mere rem
nant at bests of the "army with ban
ners" which fill our country and city
schools.
This is no indictment against the
higher schools of the land. They are
and always will be needed and are
filling, if rightly used, a beneficent
place in the school plan. The misfor-
tune is that in the years past undue
emphasis has been placed upon their
value to the detriment of the countless
thousands whose lives they never
touched and whose rights and privi-
leges should have and must have, pre-
eminent consideration if the republic
is to continue to exist and the pros
perity of the people subserved.
Happily. the lesson of our remiss-
ness and shortsightedness has been
fully learned and there is an awaken
ing on this subject among all educat-
ors who are earnest in their desire for
the welfare Of the children.
The edict is still in force that by
the sweat of their brow men must earn
their daily bread. In life's dwelling
the chamber of toll occupies a large
place. And even in free America we
cannot all expect to be captains of
industry" phenomenal geniuses or
great leaders. The many must be con-
tent to live commonplace lives. More
over, it is not in the learned profess
sions that most boys find their highest
natural aptitude.
1t is in the trades where men COM
bine the use of clear brains with deft
hands that the greater number of the
boys will take their places among the
worlds busy workers.
A great army Of bright American
boys are forced by the necessities
which confront them, to leave the
grades and the high schools every year
to become wage earners. There is
added to those, another greater num-
Der, who not from necessity but from
preference, would choose to be arti-
sans. 1t is this class, hitherto largely
ignored, which form the bone and
sinew of the nation, and to whose
needs the educators are now giving
heed.
There was recently held in the city
of Chicago a meeting of the National
Society for the Promotion Of Indus