The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-02-22
COLLEGE NOT
 BEST FOR ALL
Chandler Says He Has
 Changed His Views
False Sense of Social Values
 Should be Avoided
Practical Training Better
 Than a Delusive Veneer

Representative George B. Chandler of Rocky Hill addressed the Hartford Motherhood Club Monday afternoon on ."The Pros and Cons of a College Education MT. Chandler said that twenty years ago as the prime pal of a Massachusetts high school he had been in the habit of advising every boy to go to college. Then he had looked upon a college education as the "open sesame to the worlds treasure of Robert G. IngersolPs epigram that a college is a place where pebbles are polished and pebbles are dimmed."
 Whether. said he, a boy or girl should be sent to college is an individ- ual question, to be determined, first, by the child's inclinations, tendencies, habits, ability and powers of mental application; and, second, by the hnan- cial circumstances of the family. Don't spoil a good mechanic, a hard headed merchant or a clever sales man by trying to make of him bungling doctor, a pettifogging law yer or a droning parson" said he. Be- social values. Emerson's mixed meta phor, Hitch your wagon to a star," has caused many a heart burning. People do not understand Emerson'S stars, which were of pure white light and glowed evenly. They forget that a measured by it's glitter.
 Education should fit for life. To stamp a college trademark on a counterfeit is only to make the world all the more disgusted when it tries to cash him. Modern civilization is complex and multiform. It has changed nightly since Harvard Col lege was founded "in order that the church might have able pastors and that learning might not be buried in the graves of the fathers Then 'business'' was largely barter, scien- tif:c finance" unknown, "manufac- turing" not even started, problems of inland transportation" negligible, banking hardly thought of. and ed of Now we are face to face with a vast range of processes and indus tries. It is a new world. and new conditions demand new systems of preparation. In the first half of the last century Il Az per cent of Yale last half the percentage rose of 23 6-9. What will be the percentages for the present century? We have gotten by the period of education purely for doc tors, lawyers and ministers-the so- called '1earned professions
 A leading newspaper asked 500 suc- cessful men the question, What kind
 
 capable of being trained to fill re- positions?' Ninety per cent. answered hard york; or some syn onyTn for it; about an equal percen- tage placed honesty alongside it. These two, honesty and hard work and the same thing-these are what the world demands. Do all of our modern colleges train vigorously for hard work? Do not our modern we'll to-do families encourage their children in the fatal habit of following the line of least resstence? Boys like college life; the erect themselves into a priv ileged class. As Paul van Dyke says they often "start in to treat the cur riculum as if it were a continuous vaudeville,' with the entrance exam nations as the ticket" The real dangers of a college education do not come from the common vices of drink ing, gambling and licentiousness, for a smaller percentage of young men of college age go wrong morally than those in commercial life at the same ages. The chief danger is rather the indulgence of flaccid mental hab- it, this insidious following of the line of the least resistence, "deteriorating the fibre of the mind and rotting the will by the indulgence of idle inn pulses" If we are to have an aris- tocracy of wealth. it must remember nobIesse oblige. Out of 166 seniors in Harvard, Yale and Princeton from the families of New York having place in the "New York Social Regis ter,'' only one took first class honor he is the son of minister.
 Athletics is wholesome; neither does it seriously detract from scholarship. Statistics show that on the average athletes are only 4 per cent behind non-athletes in rank, and there are compensating advantages. Lyman Abbott who has preached for years at forty leading American colleges addressing in the aggregate 50,O00 students and making a close study of religious, ethical and social condi- tions in colleges, adopts a cheerful optimistic view.
 MT. Chandler still believed in col leges and the college education; his faith was by no meaps shaken; but he did not believe in a college educa- tion for every boy and every girl at least, not at tn stage of our civili- zation. Study the boy, make him study himself, study the world and the curicula of colleges and then de- eide your own case for yourself. Bet ter" said he; "a technical school, an agricultural school, a trade school or commercial school than delusive veneer of the humanities. diluted by idleness, dulled by indifference, vii t:ated by incompetency or overloaded by debt"