The Alaska citizen. (Fairbanks, Alaska) 1910-1917, 1911-09-11
WHAT is EDUCATION?
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BY Ebert Hubbard

BY Ebert Hubbard.
Education means growth, evolu-
tion-efficiency
That man is best educated who is
most useful.
There is no such thing as a sci
enCe of education any more than
there is a science in medicine
Some of the very strongest and
most influential men who have ever
lived We're men who have had no
advantages"
OF course it is equally true that
great numbers of college graduates
have gone to the front; but. on
the other hand, college degree is
no prof of competence.
And so long as some men who
are not college bred take first place
on the roster OF fame and other men
who are college bred sink out of
sight most thinking men are quite
willing to admit there is no such
thing as a science Cf education.
OF the college men who succeed
who shall say they succeeded by and
through the aid the college gave
or in spite of it?
Yet many men who win will wall.
IF | only had the advantage Of
college training"
If so it might have ironed all the
individuality out of them.
Yet | would have every man have
a college education in order that he
might see how little the thing is
really worth. | would have every
man rich that he might know the
wv ~ h Loo of ri
To take a young man away from
work. say at IS years of age. and
keep him from useful labor in the
name of education fer four years
will some day be regarded as an alb
surd proposition.
This separation from the practi-
cal world for number of years,
where no useful work was done and
the whole attention fixed on abstract
themes and theories. often tended to
cripple the man so that he could
never go back to the world of
! work and usefulness. He was no
longer a producer and had to be sup
ported by tithes and taxes.
And, of course, as he did not in
tend to go back to the world of work
and usefulness, it really didn't make
any difference if he did sink into a
pupa-lke condition of nullity.
In the smaller colleges many in
stances are found of students work
| ing their way through school, My
| experience leads me to believe that
such students stand a very much bet
ter chance in the worlds race than
those who are made exempt from
practical affairs by having every
thing provided The responsibility
of Gazing for himself is a necessary
factor in a mans evolution.
And the point OF this preachment
lies right here that to make a
young man exempt from the practi-
cal work from IS to q is to run
the risk of running him for life. Pos
sibly you have taken opportunity
from him and turned him into a
memory machine.
There are persons who are always
talking about preparing for life. The
| best way to prepare fer life is to
begin to live.
A school should not be prepar-
alton; school should be life
Isolation from the world in order
to prepare for the worlds work is
| folly. You might as well take a
boy out of the blacksmith shop in
order to teach him blacksmthing.
College is a make believe, and every
college student knows it. From the
age of IA and upward the pupil
should feel that he is doing some
thing useful, not merely killing time,
and so his work and his instruction
should go right along hand in hand.
And no matter how many college
degrees a man has, if he cannot earn
an honest living he is an educated
ignoramus and is one with the yes
terdays. doing pedagogic goose-step
adown the days to dusty death.