The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-05-23
Baccalaureate Sermons
 And College Addresses.

11uo 0OAAN6S &1NANAA NSSNo' 1.-THE school and college commence U ment season is close at hand and the awarding of diplomas will mark an important period in the lives of young men and young women about to enter upon useful careers. The baccalaureate discourse of to- day, as rule, is less florid than the commencement sermon of other years. It aims to be at once practical and 1 Iinspirational.,
 The student body will hear much about lofty ideals, and graduates will be reminded that the knowledge gained 1 from textbooks embraces only the fundamentals of education; that 1t will avail little in a busy world unless prin- ciples are applied along the lines of character building and constructive effort.
 In this connection every teacher and minister of the gospel will profit by reading the paper on "Labor and Edu- cation by Thomas Stockham Baker, Ph. D., secretary of the Carnegie h. stitute of Technology, published re- |cently in the Chicago Tribune. It deals with vital questions affecting the body polite and of society in general--of the relations of capital and labor and of the part our institutions of learning must play in solving profound prob Items in sociology. Among other things iDr. Baker says:
 Education is confronted with a great task It must see to it that the labor ing man obtains broader and more thorough general training so that he
 may understand the responsibilities of citizenship in democracy and so
 that he can be prepared to take ad-
 vantage of the opportunities for ad- vancement that are open to him. The
 first essential in this programme is | that the schools shall do better work.
 The relation of labor and education does not involve merely technical training and training in the trades,
 but it means higher standards in
 every phase of instruction which the schools have to offer.
 The schools would do well to strive to make every pair of hands avail able for some useful work at the time of a crisis The war has taught us
 that leisure is waste. and that waste
 is sin against the state. This idea
 has become fixed in the American conscience and it may persist. We
 shall demand that along with the pur- suit of abstract studies the schools
 shall offer courses that can be put to
 every day use. How many men have
 felt the inadequacy of their incompe-
 tency when they were unable to say
 that they could perform any one of
 the long list of practical tasks set
 forth in this paper.
 The schools must on the one hand. l strive to meet the increased demand
 for skilled men and on the other hand
 promote greater degree of .enlight-
 enment. The higher institutions of
 learning should encourage thought
 full and scientific study of labor ques-
 tions in the hope that specialists may 1 be developed who can deal with the
 relations of capital and labor in a dis
 passionate. objective manner.
 The time is past when we can af- !, ford to adopt an ostrich-lilSe method
 of burying our heads in the sand
 whenever the aims of labor are mem
 tioned. The more we know about
 the laboring man the better we shall
 be able to understand the change in z his point of view
 f The schools must become more than
 ever before the centers of serious
 work. It is impossible to take the - millions of men who compose the ar 1. mics of Europe and America from el their usual pursuits and dedicate
 them to the work of fighting without o subtracting a large amount from the l. progress of learning. It is therefore :. all the more important that the
 schools shall attempt to do all that is l- possible to balance this great debt. ! ,x-hsoh y~a t.aor ,,,ada hx, tl,o in ctior,