The Ward County independent. [volume] (Minot, Ward County, N.D.) 1902-1965, 1914-05-14
EDUCATION THAT
EDUCA7ES
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an honest living. Greater attention
will be given to moral and practical
training in the future as we reflect up
on the necessity for such training in
our day. Moral Training like Manual
Training can not be taught success
fully from a book. It requires the
right sort of a teacher and then such
training will be gained in the shop,
in the gymnasium, in the school gar
in the class room. - f.
practically the true dignity of honest
toil-hard, honest work. fear we
have been educating away from this.
We have been busy in our Rural and
Elementary schools, preparing, or try
ing to prepare, pupils to enter Second
airy Schools. In our High Schools we
are still over anxious to make 95 per
cent of the pupils follow some archaic
courses because per cent may some
day apply for entrance to some college
or university. BY doing this we disre-
gard the rights of the majority and
put a premium upon false notion of
education, and at the same time we
induce in the minds of our pupils the
opinion that education means princi-
pally to keep dressed up and that it is
q disgrace for an educated man to
wear overalls, or for an educated wo-
man to wear calico dress or an ap-
ron. This false notion and this false
standard may be at least partly re-
sponsible for the present overcrowding
of the professions and the lack of
trained workers for our varied indus
tries.
| Probably not more than four or five
per cent, at the most, of our citizens
are engaged in the professions, and
yet we constantly hear the claim made
and maintained that every profession
is being rapidly overcrowded. This is
not to be wondered at, when we con-
slider that our school courses, as they
are at the present time, if they pre-
pare for anything, prepare students
to enter colleges and professional
schools, and if our schools create in
the minds of the pupils desire for
anything in particular, it is desire
for professional and not for industrial
life.
| The majority of American citizens
now work for living, and so far as
even the most optimistic mind can
discern, will be required to work for
their living for many generations to
come. And it is an inspiring and hope
full fact that such is the case, espec-
tally for US who are engaged in school
work, because courses of study can
not be arranged for the indolent or
the Indifferent. Our nation is funda-
mentally an Industrious and industrial
nation and our public schools should
be, first of all, maintained for such
students,
! A few facts we must face and face
squarely. Tax payers, men and wo-
men who really reason and think are
pausing with greater frequency than
ever before to inquire why they should
pay twice as much to support the sec
ondary school, serving small part Of
the children of school age, as they do
to support the elementary school
which reaches and benefits far great
er number.
The tendency of our time is to rush
boys and girls into gainful pursuits
at far too early an age, because par
ents in humble circumstances, and
even those in better environment, are
unable to see any direct, practical ben
eft to accrue to their children from
the ordinary high school courses. The
Investigations and reports of investi-
gators, students of social and indus
trial pursuits, in this country, point
out distinctly this common thing
that stunted minds, loss of ambition,
and often loss Of morals, result from
the too early employment of boys and
girls, to say nothing Of the effect upon
their physical condition. We are liv-
ing in the age of machinery. Indus
! trial pursuits have come to be very
largely, SO far as the human element
is concerned, a mere watching of ma
chine process. Few, if any workers,
learn complete process. Reliable au-
thorities agree in asserting that the
| United States is today looking to Eu-
rope for it's supply of thoroughly train
ed, thoroughly skilled workers. The
statement is made that in the city of
Greater New York it is scarcely pos
sible to find an American-born and
great establishment.
! SlnCe CIle HeceSSlCy u cdINlIlk NV =
ing is driving parents to send their
children into industrial employment
at the earliest possible age and since
modern industry, thru its piece-work
methods, is stunning the minds and ar
resting the physical and moral devel-
opment of those employed in early
youth, the outlook is not very alluring
unless the public schools can do some
thing which, because of the enhanced
earning powers that will come with the
introduction of vocational courses and
the enlarged intellectual horizon that
will come with school training, will
offset the adverse tendencies of our
industrial age. Education, which is
not bread and butter matter, will not
and cannot appeal to the vast majority
who must work. The present school
system fosters and favors one class of
persons.
Greater than all other reasons for
some vocational training in our
schools, to my mind, is the moral ar
gument. This stands supreme. So
long as machine processes make it
possible to employ immature and un-
skilled workers, ION our farms as well