Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1913-01-16
FAILURE OF EDUCATIONAL
SYSTEM and ITS REMEDY
Continued From Page One)

kAOnlluutu II lOlli dkt OhSD
the study of agriculture in the high
school, where not one out of eighty
four ever gets through. To take it up
in the eighth grade is only one thing
favorable, but it ought to begin in the
first grade and lead the child TO de-
velop along practical lines in every
grade up to the eighth.
Instead of an educational system
for culture only, it should be for
practical utility only and well get
culture enough then. By Investigate
ing the matter Minnesota found that
they were educating ninety-nine per
cent of the children to be consumers
and only one-half OF one per cent to
be producers. III we keep this up
much longer where will we land?
Soon there will be nothing to con-
sumo. We have put a premium on
culture and a discount on utilitarian-
ism. The farmer and his wife are
largely to blame. They are constant
ly saying. II don't propose to have
my boy or my girl live as | have
lived, or dig as ! have had to dig.
I'm going to give them an education
So they can make living without
hard work And by the time they
are through,the eighth grade ninety
nine per cent of them won't work.
They won't even help do the chores
or help at home Saturdays. They
think labor is degrading and they are
getting too smart to work and YOU
yourselves are TO blame for it.
You are growing a hot-house plant
and expect it to be a sturdy oak tree
and you'll never do it. Oak trees are
not made that way.
Friends. we are damning our own
children by singing that kind OF a
song about hard work. No wonder
that form help today is inefficient
and incompetent This is the reason
for tive have harped that old song
about hard work till every boy or girl
that amounted to anything has got as
far away from a farm as they could
get, and we have nothing left but the
idiots and imbeCiles with which to
run the farm. You are up against it
for help and you made the conditions
yourselves.
Training for culture means develop
ing parasites. The high school boy
feels that he knows more and is
worth more than common boys and
will not work for common wages.
He is too proud to beg, so he steals
or forges or cheats to make a living
hoping through craftiness to escape.
The states prisons are full OF edu-
Gated men. Seven per cent OF them
are college graduates and not two per
cent of our whole population are col
lege graduates. We have placed a
premium upon a life of ease as if
it were ideal. To get rich easy has
been held up as the proper thing. To
succeed by ones wits, by shrewdness.
by craftiness has been the unwritten
law of the whole system. We are
growing worse instead of better for
we are producing parasites and not
producers.
Now there is a remedy. We must
go in and sweep out all this stuff
for culture only-and put i'll that
which will prove of practical value.
] hold that there is exactly as much
cultural value in figuring ont bal
anced ration for a dairy COW or plan
ming and cooking a family dinner as
there is in solving an equation in
algebra.
Perhaps some people may call me
a fool sort of a crank an uneducated
idiot or worse, but ! hold a diploma
from the University of Michigan and
it took me ten years of the hardest
kind of work to get it, and | would
not take the next ten years for it.
know its value. | dug it out myself
None of it was ever brought to me
on silver platter ] know something
of training in language, mathematics
etc, but | missed the practical
realize the loss. ! appreciate its cul
tural value. But culture alone is
worthless | knew a professor who
said, NO man is really cultured with
| OUT Il llOI OuSll COuI sc III Language
and philosophy, yet he himself wa:
one of the coarsest and worst though
of men in that college town.
Culture is not strength. Brain cell.
developed TO handle only cultura
ideas cannot be used for practica
things and not being used soon afro
ply and Idle and the man is perman
emily one-sded.
The three essentials in practica
schoolroom study are reading, writing
and arithmetic. These are the simple
tools to work with in the develop
ment OF practical affairs.
Among Chicago's foreign popula
ton il was found that less than tive
per cent Of the children ever got be
yond the second grade In that con
gested district the parents found tn,
children were not learning anythin,
OF practical value so kept them out t.
earn something toward the needs o
the family. \ settlement organiza
ton started an industrial school il
1t