Connecticut western news., 1910-07-21
SCHOOL DAYS ARE ENDED

For many school days are for season ended and before the young man and young woman stretch the long vacation season. Graduation is now thing of the past. The essays upon which So much time was spent have been read and laid aside.
 Another batch of graduates has been launched. Some are well equipped and in life's battle will win prize. Others will strive for time and sink at last in- to the common place, ambitionless, morose and practically useless.
 In which class will your lot be cast Much depends on the training gained in the schools and the practical knowledge acquired in proper handling of the tools that will have to be used ill the great workaday world in which. you are now to take part.
 If wisdom has guided your school life, and industry has spurred you oil, and you have been imbued with the deter mined spirit to succeed, come what will, your future at the outset is one of promise.
 Lamentable is the fact that much of the knowledge taught in the public schools is of little practical use when she student comes into intimate contact with the great world of work in which he or she has to earn living. There is much time spent on superla- tive things and far too little spent on the really necessary things that are go- ing to prove help to the boy or girl in later years of active industrial or com mercial life.
 Ornamental branches are all right, so far as needful. but when taught to the exclusion or the detriment of the practi- cal, their usefulness becomes negative quantity.
 There isn't man in business today, who has the hiring of help, but will agree that more than half of the gradu- ates from the public schools and colleges of the country begin their business life very poorly equipped for the duties they are expected to assume.
 They have smattering of this and that, but are rarely thoroughly grounded in anything, This is largely the age of specialists. The man who applies himself to one line of work and masters every detail, is usually the winner in that particular field in which he seeks work.
 The difficulty is that so few are ready to throw their whole heart and soul into the work to which they are called. There is too much watching the clock and too great fear of working little overtime.
 Why is it that the average graduate is so lamentably defective in arithmetic. spelling and English dictation? It would be genuine godsend to busi- ness man if he could find one out of ten that was versed in these three branches.
 Knowledge of punctuation, seems to many lost art, and even capitalization in letter writing seems to others a hope less struggle. These are practical, every day necessities. One may speak gram nautical English, but when one comes to write it, he or she is often all at sea and the defects in punctuation and spelling and even in penmanship are sadly ap- parent.
 A business man may excuse many things, but nothing wearies him more thanlthis. He may be deficient himself in all these essentials, but when he hires another. he feels that he has right to demand the intelligence for which he pays.
 Wherein lies the fault? Here is subject worth considering by our educa. tors, that the right remedy may be ap- piled.