The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1924-12-31
rWU BINDS OF COLLEGE GOATS
minneapolis JournaD

NAuilACopOiAo JouI Adl)
md now DR.. Richard Burton Of
our own University of Minnesota
has Bliued the chorus of profess
aional voices raised against the
V@rinus bljghts shat are bligh ing
away al Americas colleges. In
the pages OF the American Mer-
CnIN, he says thcT" are two great
classes I'll students whose eXclu-
SION would heIp the situation the
sons and daughters that go to col
lese because their parents nd, and
the sons and daughters who go 10
college because their parents
didn't.
DR.. Burton's picking out of these
two great groups is worthy OF
,erious consideration. The youth
who, despite inaptitude, enters col
lege just because it is 1.-The thing"
to do, merely because his forebears
were collegebred folks, OBVIOUSLY
is out of place, especially at 4
State University, supported by
public taxation. Perhaps he is
without earnest desire to absorb
the learning the institution offers.
Perhaps he is without native abil-
ity to absorb this learning. Per-
haps he is without both desire am'
ability.
Now we come to the second
group, the children who go to COL
lege because their parents did not
go. Pitiful is the plight of the fam
lily where the parents denied col
lege advantages in their own
youth, harbor the folly that some
magical influence, some education
al abracadabra cQoistered in col
lege halls, can make intellectual
giants out Of any sons and daugh-
ters, regardless of whether those
children nave the natural facili-
ties for receiving and utilizing ad-
vanced learning. Son or daughter
Is packed off to college. The re-
suits may be all that had been
hoped. Then, again, the results
may be tragically disappointing
Most of us can remember ambi-
tious youths of the long ago who
were toilsomely working their way
through college and burning the
we'll known midnight oil while
packing a hodge-podge of stuff in
to poor overworked brains inca
pable OF properly sorting and pig
eon-holeing this crammed mass of
learning. We have seen many IF
these same ambitious youths,
years afterwards. making a living
at just about the same line of en-
Geavor by which they worked their
way through school, and perhaps
occasionally wondering what was
the use Of it all And we can all
remember doctors and lawyers,
products of our Universities,
whose entrance into the learned
professions marked distinct loss
to the truck-driving and shoe
clerking fields.
1t is not intended here to dis
courage the boy working, or plan
ming to work. his way through
school who really 't.las j, in him"
Nor is it intended to discourage
the parent who seeks for lis Off
spring those educational advant-
ages which were denied to himself,
nor the father who wants his son
to be college man because his
forebears were college men. For
in each case the child may be good
college material.
it all gets down to just this.
Some of us can take" a college
education. Others of us can not.
1t is not our fault. Neither is it
our parents fault. In the eyes Of
students of hereLity, the fault, if
fault there be, lies with a long line
of ancestors reaching far back in
to the past. You can take deliv-
ery-horse colt and train it on the
race-track every day till it reaches
maturity. but you won't have a
race-horse. Possibly in twenty or
thirty generations, with the gen.
ealogical line confined to delivery
horse blood, you could make that
colts descendants begin to act and
look like race-horses, provided
each generation was trained on the
track. But that is too slow a pro-
cess for the horse-breeLer. Start
ing with that same colt, he can
obtain better results in two gen
eratiOns by a proper infusion OF
race-hOrse blood into the stock.