The Arizona copper camp., 1919-12-06
BREAD and BUTTER"
EDUCATION NOT BEST
TRAINING in THOUGHT
Considerations on the College Man
and Business Courses of Study.

| Considerations on the College Man
and Business Courses of Study.
President Charles H. Sabin of
the Guaranty Trust company, in an
interview, tells Golfers Weekly: 1t
has been impressed upon me through
many years of contact with college
graduates in business and banking
that the well-trained college man
grasps delicate situations and re-
duces them to essentials much more
quickly than the equally well-trained
man who has not had the advantage
of the broader fundamental educa-
tion the college should give.
I am not college man myself. If
I could live my life over again I
would get college education at any
cost, for the reasoning processes
which study develops would have
made many things easier for me.
should have saved time. And l
should save time in my detail work
today if the background had only
been provided.
l am perfectly frank to say that
the mastery and solution of many
of the broad International affairs
which come before me now would
he far easier had l been trained to
think when 1 was in my formative
stage. 1 expect the college man to
have this combination of background
and of thought habit, and that is all
that l do expect
There is onception-and l am
afraid it is growing there is
somewhere point of contact be-
tween the business school and the
university-that facility in minor
technique is of high value. This is
not a condition into which the col
leges alone are falling-the schools
got there earlier. A great many
employers used to ask, and perhaps
some still ask: what is the use
of Latin? What is the use of Greek?
What is the use of taking up other
than practical subjects?" For in
stance, business school is sup
posed to turn out expert stenogra-
piers. The school is founded and
exists solely for that purpose; the
pupils register for that one thing.
They graduate as stenographers.
Thinking Precedes Theory
Reasoning by analogy, the unthink-
ing man decided that really eff
cient college should also turn out
finished products accomplished
bankers, merchants or what not,
cap-a-pie, and ready for the business
fight. Hence, in the last dozen years
we have had the colleges giving all
sorts of courses-"bread and butter
courses" l believe they are called
which pretend to fit man to take
place at once in a high capacity
in some form of business.
But why should one go to college
to learn banking when more detail
of banking practice can be amassed
in a month of actual work than in
two years of collegiate work? What
cannot be easily done in the bank
is to teach the theory of banking,
for one cannot grasp the theory of
banking without first knowing how
to think. Learning to think is
long and slow process. To me the
so-called practical or bread and but
ter courses are the least important
in the school or collegiate curricu-
lum. Sometimes they are but cheap
and shoddy window dressing. When
the college attempts to teach the
detail of business it completes with
the training of actual business life
and gets nowhere.
| do not mean that the college
should not recognize that it is fit
ting men for life in this world But
it should not try to build the roof
ahead of the foundation. When
man has really learned to think,
then any subject comes easily to
him, and it is saving time to spend
whatever period may be required
solely on mind-developing subjects.
| leave to the educators the choice
of means and methods, but if Greek
and Latin give the best mental
training, then by all means teach
Greek and Latin. l for one would
not look at the method of training,
but at the result, and | am entirely
certain that the man who comes out