The Brunswick news. [volume] (Brunswick, Ga.) 1906-2016, 1912-07-14
BY AN OBJ SERVER.

live, not having mad superior adVdn-
tages. But is it not possible that
these few men possessed some very
unusual qualities or gifts that made
them successful in spite of ignorance?
What might the sam men not have
amounted to had they had opportun-
tiles? There was time in our coun-
try's history in its period of forma
| ton when man rose by sh er will
pCT,er and favorable circumstances
and appeared a very meteor by rea-
III of the conditions existing and his
part in controlling them. But those
days have passed. The presidents
now are college men; all the execu-
tives in fact are educated, and the
skilled laborer has far the advantage
of the self-made man. What have
the uneducated contributed toward
science? How many hospitals or
other public institutions have they
built? How have they bettered So
ciety or advanced civilization in any
way? Are we content to have our
boys take no part in the gigantic
problems of our advancing civilization,
the vast wake of progress that fol-
lows in the paths of learning?
The next point to be considered is
that of morality. Does the college
make men moral or does it have the
opposite effect? Again the iconoclast
points with joy to the solitary depar-
ture of the enlightened man from the
straight and narrow path, forgetting
the thousands who pursue it faith
fully Is this departure the result of
culture or is it in spite of it? Whether
the masses and whether respect for
conventionality, fear of the loss OF
position, or the ambition to stand well
in the eyes of the world, motives en-
| gendered by education constitute the
morality of the classes, are ever de-
batable subjects. We know that con-
ditions of mental, moral and physical
decay exist appallingly. Are they
among the educated? And if they are
is the community to blame? No, for
But the boy who is reared in pow
erty, squalor, discomfort, with no
effort made to give him an education,
no implement fitted to his hand for
his use in the battle for existence; no
trained powers of judgment, or will; ;
no keen sense of right and wrong;
nothing but darkness and a bli.d e
sentiment to the conditions that have
made him what he is; when this boy,
grown old in the ways of sin, mounts
the scaffold to pay the penalty of his
life for some crime committed thru
ignorance or lack of training. and
says to the minister who stands by
him to- the last, IF / had only met
some one like you sooner my life
would have been different" Do we
not then feel that somebody is to
blame? This man who was once a
boy like ours had not been given a
fighting chance.
i The school is the greatest, the
most universal, the most potent fac
tor in the progress of civilization. We
must not measure it's standard by the
few who fail Education is the en-
deavor to liberate the ideal human
being that lies concealed in every
, child" Educate means to lead out.
Education puts nothing in. Its mis-
sion is to bring out, spread out, and
sometimes to stamp out, what is al
ready in.
Horace Mann, the geratest Ameri
can educator and one whose SYM
patty for children was the mainspiin
of his useful life,was called upon once
to speak at the opening exercises OF
a new college. In his remarks he
said that if all the money, time, labor
/ and thought expended on all the
4 school buildings in the world only
2 saved one boy, they were we'll spent
Some one demonstrated with him
afterwards and asked him wasn't il
: rather extravagant to say so much
mo: ey and so on were vel ispcnt il
it only saved one boy He replied
= Not if it were my boy"