The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-13
A DISCUSSION ON EDUCATION


 They were gathered in the big. roomy library of Judge Hilliard's s home. A fine representative group of middle-class Americans-men upon whose shoulders fell much more than. their proportion of the work of the world
 The Judge himself-tall, grave, and with the studious stoop of one to whom books were dear familiars.
 Dr. Carson, clean-visaged and alert "a man who had touched life at many angles. Professor Craig whose kindly gray eyes reflected his enthusiasm as he vehemently defend ed his order; Arkwright, the lawyer his friends called him 'Voltaire, so caustic was his tongue, and so rapier- like his wit; Big Joe Emerson-who was rapidly hewing for himself a ca reer in the business world; and little Mrs. Hilliard-shrewd analyist and a. perfect marvel in "cutting across lots'' to the cruX of question, and settling it with flash of epigrammatic logic or was it intuition?
 They had seated themselves around the cracking log fire. The incense from the cigars of Dr. Carson and Mir. Emerson rose eddyingly-to be eventually caught by the chimney draught, and whisked upward, as though by the invisible hand of a genii.
 T tell you, Judge -Arkwright, with terrier-like pertinacity was con tinuing an argument begun at the dinner table-"'The average college is superficial; deficient in permanence of results. The time spent in plug ging away at geometry, mathematics, trigonometry, Greek, and many other branches which are of no practical value. and rarely-or never referred to after leaving school; could be spent to much better advantage by a pupil who merely desired a broad ed ucation along general lines'
 My idea, exactly" broke in Dr. | lCarson-who was chronic and in- curable radical and iconoclast-..Not one graduate in ten remembers any thing definite about the major DOT ton of his college studies. In many l instances because of our foolish sys- tenn of examining -an actual distaste against reading anything requiring 1 mental concentration has been deve1- oped.
  ltant thing in life is to learn to live l in conformity with Natures laws. Why don't we pay& &more attention to biology, hygiene dietetics. sexual 1 physiology and psychology, effects of exercise, bathing, and all that con- cefns the physical welfare, so that 2 sound body may house a developed | mind ?''
 &1-,- C.. educational system Ut was the moth CT in Mrs. Iilliard sub-consciously 1 fighting for her young-"is is that ado delicate period sofst their lives--are l driven through a course of studies necessitating home work which leave them little or no time for out door recreation, and frequently breaks down their health, ruins their eyes, or makes of them lifelong in
 valids and nervous wreeks." N l The Judge having filled his old \ briar, struck a match and in the glow of the semi darkness interjected. \ "Why not dispense with the entire l fallacious system? Darwin, Davy Tyndall, Hugh Miller. the Humbolts l Pasteur and a host Of others men who have revolutionized modern
 thought and radically changed oul l conceptions of biology. physics, geol- l ogy, paleontology. physical geography l medicine and chemistry-were not college men; or else they attended as Darwin did, term or less before i they were convinced that the schools l had nothing to offer them"
 Tn medicine'-the Doctor punctu- lated his statement with emphatic l thun1p on the arm of his chair-..it l is acknowledged that food taken into 1 the system in excess of physi ological j,reauirements becomes 'under-oxidiz- | d'-insufficiently converted d'-and 1 develops poisonous. end products