The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1912-03-07
EDUCATION IS
WHAT ONE CAN DO
Oh. K. Bush Brown.)


mercial test to university student?
Such test, however, has been made
by the Harvard appointments office
and the showing, while startling, is
certainly far from flattering. Accord
ing to the statistics available the av-
erage wage of man who has reeeiv-
ed bachelors s degree is at first about
$l5 per week. Princeton reports show
that it's graduates start at an average
of So per week. From tables made up
from the salaries paid graduates in
certain lines of employment the aver
ages are as follows: Brokerage busi-
ness, SO to SO per week, manufactur-
ing, 81 to $12; and engineering, SO
to SIS. In all these lines the college
graduate does not receive more than
the average high school graduate. 1t
is obvious that these institutions are
not measuring education in dollars and
cents. Their declared purpose is to
give an all around education for a
gentleman. That they are doing this
to good purpose is shown by the fol-
lowing incident which recently oc-
Cured at Harvard: Professor w. II.
Scofeld, instructor of comparative
literature, asked a class of more than
100 when Aristotle lived. Not one
could answer. When he further in
quired how many thought he was born
after 1910, six men held up their
hands.
The attainment of the degree which
stands for culture insures, however,
respectable position in society. Most
graduates are also skilled in several
of the gentle arts of idleness, and
while they have not increased their
earning capacities, they have quite
necessarily acquired the needs and
facilities for spending more than when
they entered college. With the earn
ing capacities of children and the
spending capacities of men, the period
of dependence is prolonged and unless
the earning and spending can be made
to balance the danger is that our ele-
gantly educated gentlemen will serve
no higher purpose than to distribute
the wealth that his forebears have ac-
cumulated. And this also, through no
particular fault of his own.
In order to comprehend this new
university we must establish new
fundamental principal that education
is not a commodity that can be az
uuired fur fee. 1t can only be had
by living it, That only by self-reliant,
self supporting and selfrespecting work
can we attain real knowledge of the
arts and science By dealing with
them personally at first hand and not
by mans of indireetion from some one
else; a great university would deal
with life in all its conditions and be
in perpetual experimentation with ev-
cry problem for the uplift of mankind.
An ideal, perfect city, state in itself,
wherein every vocation would play its
part in the highest form, so that those
who studied in these surroundings
would find no contrast in stepping in
to the outside world, except that in
spired by the knowledge of his own
great work to do in order to fulfill his
part in the great struggle for better
surroundings and better kind of liv-
ing innate in every soul. That if our
great republic is to succeed 1t must
be through constructive cooperative
work for the uplift of all, and not
through individualism and competing
for better places by pulling each other
down.
| Heretofore we have had sections of
humanity dominated and controlled by
the military spirit at other times by
| the religious spirit, not infrequently
by the two combined, again by the
legal spirit and by the military and
legal spirit, and always ruled by the
power of money; at all timse preach
ing and promising the brotherhood of
man but never attaining it except in
modified and attenuated form.
Here we have a great republic es-
| tablished on the fundamental base
! that call men are created free and
equal' With the best of intentions
and efforts at equal opportunities of
education through the highest develop
ment of the public school that the
world has seen, vet we have neverthe-
less failed of attaining the maximum
of productive capacities both for the
poor who are allowed to leave school at
! fourteen and for the rich who are edu-
Gated in a false atmosphere and know
not life itself. We have in conse-
quenee one kind of education for the
poor, another for the rich, and through
individualism, selfishness and the love
of power have people divided against
/ istelf, and it is known that home
divided against itself cannot stand. -
Let us then be frank with ourselves
and our national ideal, and establish
one community in the form of uni
versity wherein science and art will
be enthroned as the dominating spirits,
and where everyone will be judged by
his deeds, where self-reliance and self
support shall rule.
Under such influence the mature
student when leaving the institution
may hope to have a greater earning
capacity than when they entered it.
and be better fitted to take hold of
life to make of it "Peaee on earth,
good will toward men.
Tn outline this is the kind of insti-
tuition contemplated by Senator Borah,
of Idaho, in his bill to establish the
Federal university, to be located at
Washington, and be in cooperation
with the state, colleges, universities
and experimental stations, and have
local co operative centers wherever the
people want them. A university with
| - 4.