The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-04-05

The suggestion of tho Rockefeller Board of Educ&tiGn tkat grammar, h.Gtcry, Greek, Latin ard tho clas- sics be dropped srd that science be made tho dominating feature oi school curriculrms is one that has already been ag;tated quite cXten- sively, as well as in the United States, in other lands also. Natur- ally anything ccInectCd with a Rockefeller Board may rightly be suspected of an ultcrior motive, but hcrc we can also reasonably believe that the BCard has ;n view t:e in- creased efficiency of workers as workers and employers as em- p,oyers.
 What is an education anyhow? Huxley has already defined what he conceived tc b0 ''lib1r2" educa- tion and broadly speaking such definition may be accepted for edu- cation genofally. That mn l think, has had liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is tho ready servant of his will, and docs with case anu pleasure all tho work that, as mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine with all its parts of equal working strength and in smooth working, order; ready Ike 8 steam engine to be turned to any kind of work and spin the gocsamors az well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the lcws of her opera. 1iOrs; one who, no stunted aTcetic. is full of life end fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by vigorous will. the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love ell beauty whether of nature or of art, to hate all vilencss and to respect others as him99lf'.
 Naturally there are shortcomings in that definition and tEc greatest Of it's imperfoctions is tho perfect idea. which it sets before it as attainabia. That's neither here nor there. Tho point is that according to such de- milton mighty few of us are edn- catcd and tho fault is not ours but the system which is being pursued.
 It is hard to realize what a com plcte failure the public school system is in the United States with rare eX' captions. And that mems thct the failure of the educ"tcrs h,9cd b. the public is abject and rcGl That in turn may be the public's fault: but the incompleteness of the edp cational system is so real and so glar- ing that it's only pretense to as sumo that it's an education at ali, in the strict meaning of the torm.
 The explanation is found of course basically in the economic syscm. The vast majority ere unable to get any any sort of an education and unless we pretend to ourselves that it is an education to be able to reGd some, write indiffercntly and figure un- certainly, we can lay no claim what ever to be educated.
 It's the height of folly to believe that learning a smattcring of Latin or Greek or German or French, which is to be forgotten just as soon as we leave school, is any earthly use. There is a certain amount ot mental discipline in the process, but the process as conduced in the aver age High School regarding the class ics is very slip shod, careless ano unmethodical so the discipline might otherwise obtain. is lacking. It Is true that we may acquire a better understanding of our own tongue by a precise acquaintance with that of other peoples, ancient or modern; we come to possess an enlarged vo- ,cabulary in the language is our mother tongue and greater case anu grace of diction. But these results presuppore an earnestness of study and a still greater earnestness of teaching involving in instructors in finite care and infinite patience and infinite love of imparting such knowledge, that under ordinary con ditiOn is not very much in cvidenct.
 In few schools emphasis is laid upon the elementary fact that no knowledge of anything is acquired